Full text of "Amiga Shopper - Issue 71 (1997-01)(Future Publishing)(GB)"

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The fat lady finally sings for

Issue 71 January 1997 £4.50 us $9.95* ha 19.95

Issue!

In this last ever issue we
reveal what we think will
happen to the Amiga now

Amazing programs for you

Full details on page 6

Inside this issue

• It's the end of the world as we know it: On this
final issue occasion, we all spill our guts about how we
feel for the future of our beloved Amiga.

• Get Printing: A whole new batch of printers for use
with the Amiga come under scrutiny. Plus we look at the
latest versions of enhancement software.

• Power 68030: What can you expect for under
£100? A 68030 and 4Mb RAM, that's what!

• DrawStudio: The review version of the amazing new
drawing package arrives in time for our full attention.

• AWeb-ll: The commercial release of the popular
HTML browser brings improvements, but is it enough?

• I/O Extender & Multiface 3: Two new Zorro
based expansion ports for box Amigas.

• Font Machine 2: A full update to the amazing
program that generates colour fonts in seconds.

• CD-ROMs: The latest CDs appraised.

oj&s&j

1 >3rV
O

PLUS:
DrawStudio

The full review

Font Machine 2

Exclusive review of the complete
program update

Power 68030

Cheap acceleration?

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From the
makers of

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WE WILL MATCH OR BEAT ANY GENUINE

QUOTED PRICES.

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HARD DRIVE OVER

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2.5GIG £229

3.2GIG £299

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20Mhz £8.00
33Mhz £10.00
50Mhz £50.00

microvitec 14" £259
microvitec 15" £399
microvitec 17" £499

fax 3.36

external

fax

modem

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simm ram simm

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16mb72pin

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GASTEINER

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EDMONTON N1 8 2YZ

DELIVERY CHARGES
ALL PRICES INCLUDE VAT. SMALL CONSUMABLES AMD SOFTWARE
ITEMS UNDER THE VALUE OF £59 PLEASE ADD £3.50 P&P.OTHER
ITEMS EXCEPT LASERS. NEXT DAY COURIER SERVICE £10 PER BOX.
OFFSHOHE AND HIGHLANDS. PLEASE CALL FOR A QUOTATION IN
ADDITION WE OFFER THE FOLLOWING EXPRESS SERVICES:
SATURDAY DELIVERY NORMAL RATE PLUS £15 PER BOX. MORNING.
NEXT DAY NORMAL RATE PLUS £10 PER BOX. E&OE PRICES ARE
SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE ALL TRADEMARKS
ACKNOWLEDGED

January 1997

Issue 71

ShopperContents

Editorial

o, here we are at last.
I The final Issue. Many
people didn't think
we'd ever manage to come
this far, but It is a tribute to
the talents and efforts of all
those who work for Amiga
Shopper that we have. It is
only a shame that we won't
be here to tell you about all
the new and exciting products that are still in
the pipeline for the Amiga.

The death of AS by no means signals the
end of the Amiga. So don't give up just yet.
All your favourite people will still be around
In Amiga Format, so you don't have to say
goodbye just yet.

And as if to prove a point this month's
AS is packed from cover to cover with news
and reviews of the latest hot products. We
thought about the situation and decided that
rather than create a morose last issue
looking back at former glories, we would
continue to cover all the brand new releases
with the editorial quality that made us so
popular.

So this month, you'll find a round-up of
all the new printers and enhancement
software for the Amiga as well as new pieces
of hardware like the I/O device for A400Q
owners and the cut-price accelerator for
A1200 owners. Then there's the commercial
release of AWeb-l I and the review of the
excellent DrawStudio. You can find the demo
of this product on this month's Cover disk. A
brand new version of Font Machine gets the
full treatment and finally there's a roundup of
the new CD-ROMs.

Of course we couldn't go out without
letting you know exactly what was
happening. So, we all got together to give
you our feelings on the end of AS and the
future of the Amiga. Well, this Is it. The end of
the line.

Take care

David Taylor,
Deputy Editor

ShopperDisk

Brilliant. There's no other word for it.

DrawStudio Demo _6

A powerful new program that seems to have
come from out of nowhere. This drawing
package is blurring all the lines and causing
quite a stir in the office.

Pretium Demo 8

Try out the new accounts software.

Utilities 8

The last 6 utilites to grace an AS disk.

Full index over the page

Issue 71

The essential magazine for Amiga enthusiasts

Shop per Features

The Final Issue

As we look towards the future (and a Future)
without Amiga Shopper, what do we all think of
its demise and what hope is there for the
Amiga? Everyone has their say.

Printers

One of the most popular additions to the
computer is a printer. It makes all those word
processing and paint packages worthwhile.
The technology is moving forwards all the time
and Larry Hickmott is our expert. Read his
reviews of all the new machines and the latest
releases of the software that drives them. Which
gives the best results for Amigas. With
Christmas in the air, you should read this before
buying that present.

S h o p pe r Reviews

Power 030

A 25Mhz 030 accelerator for under £1 00?
With 4Mb RAM onboard and a 68882 maths
co-processor. David Taylor sees whether this
is an offer that's too good to be true.

DrawStudio

It's a storming program that can do more than
any other program of its type. In fact, there
aren't really any other programs of its type - it's
that original. David Taylor gives you the details
on the release version of this new package.

AWeb-ll

Another WWW browser goes commercial.
Graeme Sandiford discovers what this
program has that makes it so special.

I/O Extender &
Multiface 3 24

Two new interface extenders for the A4000

come under the scrutinous eye of

Simon Goodwin. What can they do for you?

Font Machine 2

A major update brings powerful new features to
the program that can create new typefaces in
seconds. David Taylor has the details.

CD-ROMs

Ben Vost reviews three of the latest releases.

January 1997

JTie DeskJet 690C is just one of the printers
reviewed in our special printer feature.

Shopperlutorials

WWW Tutorial 42

Ben Vost ends the two part tutorial for those
building their own WWW pages.

CanDo Tutorial

John Kennedy winds up the extensive tutorial
series that has helped you use CanDo.

Blitz BASIC 46

Paul Overaa finishes off his help and advice
for BASIC programmers.

ShopperRegulars

Coverdisk
News

Amiga Answers

10
33

Having problems? We'll try to help.

Public Domain 37

Letters 48

The sad farewells which flooded in.

The End

ShopperServices

Back issues

Amiga Format
Reader Ads

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Shopper Co verdi^t^ ^

Instructions

David Taylor

Cover

We haven't gone down
without a fight, but now
that the final bell has
sounded, we didn't want
to go out with a disk
that wouldn't be of real use. This disk has
two commercial demos and six Shareware
utilities so you can't go wrong.
DrawStudio, reviewed this issue, is such a
strong package we decided everyone
should get to try it out. It seems nothing
can stop people producing software that
improves on earlier products and stretches
the limits of the machine. If you do like the
product, then we urge you to buy it,
because without support from users, there
will definitely be no more commercial
releases from developers of products of
this calibre.

ApplicationZone

DrawStudio

This program takes structured drawing to new
levels, literally, on the Amiga. We previewed a
version last issue and here we have the demo.
Essentially structured drawing aims to make the
creation of pictures and diagrams as easy as
possible for everyone. If you're a great freehand
artist then you don't need a computer that can
help you out, but for the rest of us a program
that can make everything as error free as
possible is indispensable.

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The power of DrawStudio could make it one of
the Amiga's most popular programs ever - if you
support it

Amiga:

disk

As this is sadly the final Coverdisk of Amiga Shopper, we decided
that we'd include a demo of what might prove to he the last great
Amiga product, DrawStudio. David Taylor introduces the final cut.

DrawStudio offers drawing tools that make
sense, As well as the usual line, square and
circle type brushes, there are also bevelled
boxes and bezier curves You can select colours
for lines and for the fill colour of objects as well
as the solidity and thickness of lines. The end of
each line can also be defined to either a blank or

Guide to the DrawStudio interface

1 ARROW TOOL

Allows you to select objects for editing, moving and re-
sizing. Selected objects will be shown by the little
boxes at the edges.

2 ROTATE TOOL

Allows you to pick up an object and rotate it freehand

to the desired angle.

3 HAND TOOL

You can move around the page with this. If you are
zoomed in close, this allows you to move the visible
area of the page around to find what you need.

4 ZOOM TOOL

This opens up a magnifying glass. You can simply click
on an area to go in a level or drag a box over the area
you are interested in to see just that part. If you hold
down the shift key, you can zoom out.

5 FREEHAND TOOL
Draw lines freehand

e TEXT TOOL

Place the text on the screen. You can type in as

normal. The font type and size are defined in Text

7 STRAIGHT LINE

draw a straight line

8 BEZIER CURVE

Draw lines which you can then bend to the correct
angle. One to experiment with.

9 RECTANGLE

Filled any way - chosen through the Attributes menu.

10 ROUNDED CORNER BOX

The same as the rectangle tool but with squared off

11 CIRCLE

It's a circle, obviously.

a set of arrows or curves. When you draw a line
or rectangle or circle, it is placed on the page as
an object. Each object is totally separate to any
others placed on the page and you can go back
to any later and pick them up and move them or
resize them. When you have a set of objects
positioned correctly together they can be

12 INCOMPLETE CIRCLE TOOL

Draw a circle as normal then hold down the left mousi
button and move it around til you have the amount of
the circle you want. This too can be filled or line.

13 LINE COLOUR

Chooses the colour for the lines from a palette
requester.

14 FILL COLOUR

Chooses the colour of the fill from a palette requester

15 LINE DASH

Selects the type of line, from solid to Intermittent
dashes.

16 THICKNESS OF LINES
Chosen from a drop down menu.

17 END OF LINE TYPE

Allows you to choose style of the end of lines, from
arrows and boxes.

18 THE PAGE NUMBER

From the project you are working on. Projects can be
multi-page documents like the tutorial included.

19 LAYER LEVEL

Allows you to select the layer of the page. You can atii
new layers by clicking on the text and bringing up the
layer requester.

20 Objects can be selected and grouped to create
larger objects which can then be moved as a single
abject.

21 THE LINE TOOL WITH AN ARROW END
Notice how as the selected object it is marked with
boxes.

22 Complex and impressive objects can be built up
with care even by mediocre users. This display is 1-bii
but you can up the display mode on faster Amigas to
colour.

January 1996

Issue 71

David Taylor

Instructions

{£^£|p pe rCoverdisks

The tutorial project is a multi-page document
which shows off some of the most useful
features of the prgoram.

grouped to act as a single object (you can
ungroup them back to separate objects again if
you want). This way you can create components
of a picture from the lines and boxes that make
up any image - like the wheel in the picture
created from ovals and lines. Components can
then be cut and copied and pasted as an
ordinary object, resized and changed as

necessary. Already you can see how this can
make the creation of pictures easier for everyone.

Secondly, DrawStudio offers layers. Layers
are like an extension of objects. They allow you to
build up a picture by placing different sets of
objects on different layers like onion skins. This is
useful for imported objects and ones placed
partially over the top of one another. You can then
easily create multi-layered pictures - it's like a
stationary parallax effect.

You can import bitmap pictures into objects
so that you aren't stuck with single colours inside
boxes. You could also have textures or scans
inside and colours can be given a degree of
transparency so they show objects and colours
behind them.

Aside from the toolbar, there are many
features accessible from the menus. Requesters
are often nestled within one another and you
have to work through levels to define the areas
you are interested in. Look in the Attributes
requester for objects which allow you to alter all
the parameters of objects and lines, including the
setting of the bitmap fill mentioned earlier.

The program will only install to a hard drive,
but requires no further installation after de-

The object attributes allow you to make all
manner of changes to any object. This is where
you choose bitmap hits.

archiving. You should also note that it uses MUI
so you must already have that on your system, ff
you don't, you can obtain evaluation versions
from Aminet, BBSs, PD houses and numerous
Coverdisks. The full version costs £59.95 for
floppy and £79.95 for CD and is available from
LH Publishing on 01 908 370230. For more of a
tutorial check out the project included.

January 1996

Instructions

David Taylor

I.U.UI.IBJJJJIPPW.B I. ,i ,1

g Standard Account: *Hy Savings"

Date Description Uithdr» Deposit Balance

Year Category Heno

Pretium gives you three types of accounts held in the Accounts group

Pretium

This is the second commercial demo this month.
Reviewed last issue it scored a respectable
69% and now you can try out the program's
features for yourself. It's not the full version but
you can still use it to set up and save your own
accounts.

To get started, load the program up and
then select New Group from the Project menu.
This allows you to set up your own set of
accounts. Enter the name of the account group
into the requester and select the path. You can
also enter a password to protect the entire
accounts group from being opened. The empty
accounts group window will open.

You now enter the names of the accounts
you want to open. Just click inside the text box
and type in an account name, like "Dave's
Savings", When you press return, another
requester will appear with the options to add a
memo to the account, set the password and
opening balance and to choose the type of
account. There are three types: standard - for
normal savings type accounts, Checking - for
cheque accounts including cheque numbers,
and Credit - designed for credit card use. The
first two work in the same way, displaying the
positive in black and any negative in red. The
Credit account uses the opposite colours, as it
works by building up debt, the more transaction
you put on the card, the higher the figure and to
get the account into the red (credit), you pay off
the card. It may seem a little unusual but is
meticulously logical when you think about it.

When you have a new account open, add
transactions at the bottom of the window. The
date is shown at the left. Next to that is the
description and category window - every
transaction has a category and you can't start
entering data until you set some up. Choose the
categories list from the View menu and then set

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gives details.

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up ones that you will use by
typing in their names into the
text field and pressing
<Return>. As every
transaction is on two lines, you
enter the description on the
top line and a category on the
bottom. Next to the categories
box is the actual amount, the
left for credits and the right for
debits (reversed in the Credit
account). The second line of
this section is left for a memo
if you want to add some text.
The balance is shown in the
next window and is generated
automatically.

The program is easy to get
to grips with and if you do need help then there
is a full AmigaGuide document. The full product
is available for around £40 from IDD in the USA
on Tel: 001 352 373 9471.

Utilities

BlizKick

Author: Harry Sintonen

This program is a must for Blizzard board
owners allowing you to rekick any kickstart
ROM file in RAM using your board. It means you
can get faster performance out of your machine
and even map a different ROM from another
machine. So you can kickstart your A1 200 with
A500 ROMs if you want backward compatibility.
Obviously you can just use it to speed up your
machine or to replace several other commands
you already use.

GifGrabber

This script is associated with this month's
WWW tutorial on page 42 and is explained in
detail there. It's an ARexx script written by
Michael Battilana of Cloanto.

QDisk

Author: Norman Baccari

This program monitors disk usage of mounted

volumes on Workbench and allows you to set

limits to capacity beyond which will! invoke a
warning. When you start the program it will

Dodgy disk?

To avoid errors when installing to floppies,
ensure that your destination disks are of
high quality. It an error occurs, try re-bootlng
and using a different spare disk - the
majority of errors are caused by faulty
destination disks.

If your Coverdisk refuses to work and
you are certain it is faulty, please return it,
along with an 5.A.E., to the address below.
Please do not send faulty disks to the Amiga
Shopper offices.

Amiga Shopper Coverdisk
(insert the name of the disk),
TIB pic, TIB House,
1 1 Edward Street,
Bradford
BD4 7BH.

January 1996

open a window with details of the drives and by
double clicking on a volume name, you will get
more details about the drive including capacity,
block size and soft errors on the disk.

Whirl GIF

Author: Kevin Kadow/Lars Eilbrecht
This port of the command from Unix is a
program that can create animated GIF files from
a set of GIFs. GIF images are not native to the
Amiga, but they are the most widely used file
format on the WWW and animated GIFs are
often used on logos or pictures so you can use
them to liven up your own WWW home pages.

WinCommodity

Author: Michael Gollmick

This program adds a few hotkey features to

Workbench, It allows you to centre windows,

close windows, go to parents, flick through

windows and more. The hotkeys are detailed in

the documents and can be set up using the

tooltypes.

WW5 HTML

Author: Rudy Kohut

This is a wizard for Word worth 5 helping you
create Web pages by completing HTML tags for
you. It gives you shortcuts to many of the
standard HTML source.

Well that's it. It just remains to say farewell
and to thank all the past contributors.
Hopefully these Coverdisks have proved of
use to everyone and I've certainly enjoyed
compiling them! ■

Beginners, look!

Before using this month's Coverdisk, please
be Sure to back it up - just in case. Simply
follow the easy instructions below.

DBoot up from your Workbench disk or
partition, double-click on your Shell
icon - to be found in your System Drawer.

B If you only have one disk drive, type in
the following line and then press Return.
Diskcopy from DF i

If you have two drives, place the Coverdisk in
DFQ: and a blank in DPI:, then type in this
line instead:

Diskcopy from 3F0: tO DFli

B Follow the on-screen prompts and
remember that the Coverdisk is the
source disk and the blank is the destination.

□ if you used the two-drive method,
remember to rename the copy by
clicking on its icon and pressing right-Amiga r.

Off you have two drives, you can also
copy the disk from Workbench by
dragging the Coverdisk icon over the
destination disk's.

QThen place either of the Coverdisks in
DFQ: and resel the Amiga to ooot it. It
is best to boot disk 1 (or the Subs disk if
you're a subscriber). This will let you install
all the disks to either floppy or hard drive.

Issue 71

'erts on the Amiga

a &Video

peripherals

Super Scan

C^sr. Hs fas

: u^- . ; CR.

\MIGA 23pin RGB port.

• Adapts all the inpi i ;ind clearer

iay on your small-pitch, high resolute -or .

• Supports s nput,

• Spei I, When this board is installed it
I e<; phenomenon from all AMIGA 15k modes.

Video Magician

• Internal Amiga to VGA double scan rate converter tor
AMIGA 2000, 3000. 4000 computers.

• Double scans all AMIGA 15k video signals into VGA 31.5k
signals. No AMIGA specification monitor needed,

• Supports all AMIGA display modes and FLICKER FREE with your AMIGA in 15K mode.

' full colour resolution,

• With RGB encoded signal in CVBS, SVHS (Y/Cj output.

• 100% plug and play, no jumper or switch to be adjusted. Automatically detects the
NTSC/PAL system; and all modes of AMIGA display for output in VGA. CVBS. SVHS.

• Strong expansion ability: a. Video decoder daughterboard - optional; b. SVHS (Y/C)
Genlock daughterboard - optional.

• Flicker switch equipped - if you want to have a look at the original flicker image of the AMIGA
(Normally records the AMIGA video signal into VCR so you can see the quality of display on
the VGA monitor as a preview), the flicker switch is very useful!

BC1208MA

* 8Mb true zero wait state ram
card for AMIGA A1200.

• With clock and TWO FPU

SOCKETS: PGA and PLCC.

• Uses the standard 72pin Simm module: 1Mb, 2Mb. 4Mb or 8Mb.

• Battery backed up RTC included.

• Fully compatible with PCMCIA card, and specially designed re-location
of memory into C0-D7 to get more memory when using the 8Mb SIMM.

• Very good performance i2.33 times than A1200, tested by
Sysinfo V3.22)

• Memlink ' software included.

enquiries welcome
Bio-Con Taiwan Corp.

1st Floor, No. 2, Alley 8, Lane 223,
Sec 4, Cheng-Kung Road, Nei-Hu,
Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Tel: +886-2-7902761 or 7927590
Fax: 4-886-2-7902730

E-Mail: biocon@msl.hinet.net

All Qrand names and trade ■""

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ShopperNews

January 97

Issue 71

Cologne show report,
Phase 5 news and more
on Village Tronics' new
Picasso IV card in Amiga
Shopper's final news
round-up

Woah de Cologne!

November 15-17 1996: Cologne,
Germany. The Amiga's biggest
and best show was back. It is
getting smaller every year, but
it is just as vital as ever.
Computer 96 was ostensibly for the
Amiga, Mac, PC and Acorn however, I
would say that at least 80 per cent of the
attendees were there to see what was new
for their Amigas. German telly was there,
as usual, covering the various things going
on at the show and the noise levels were
very high.

But you want to hear about what was new.
I saw a new video conferencing system called
Cocktel from ProDAD. Able to send and receive
video and audio signals over the internet or a
direct telephone connection it costs less than
£300. Phase 5 were there with an enormous
stand demonstrating their alpha version of the
PowerUp board complete with special versions
of various software titles like Reflections and a
demo mandelbrot program rendering the
complex fractal image practically in real time (at
700 iterations) at roughly 700 x 500 in 24-bit.

Stefan Ossowski had a large stand that
was consistently four deep in manic Amiga
punters all wanting to say hello to lason
Compton, John Potter (the author of Directory
Opus), and various luminaries that came and
went on the stand.

Amiga peripheral prices were also something
to wonder at. VoB had a Nokia 17" monitor with
a TV tuner and built-in speakers. It was also
suitable for graphics card use since it could
handle rates of 64kHz - all for about the same

With more
titan 45,000
visitors to
Computer
96 in
Cologne,
you were
guaranteed
a long wait
at the bar

Ife

* —

g*-

M 'U

IL.fPl ■

'*/ J ™

Petro Tyschtchenko, boss of Amiga
Technologies, in a pensive mood.

cost as the standard Microvitec 1 7 incher. They
also had a CD burning solution with a Mitsumi
drive and their own software for just 999DM
(roughly £400 !).

Computer Vesalia, a big mail order house.
had the Artec Colorstation A6000 24-bit, single
pass. SCSI 2, 2400dpi A4 scanner complete
with software for just 699DM (about £2 B0).
Accelerator cards, hard drives. CD-ROM drives
and memory were all at the cheapest prices I
have ever seen.

If you hadn't already got a CD-ROM drive
for your A1 200 you could get one of the Amiga
Technologies Q-Drives for about fifty quid and
the 32Mb Simm I bought for my new
accelerator card cost me just £1 20.

The presence of other platforms didn't seem
to dampen Amiga users' spirits - they were
even lifted when they found Dr. Peter Kittel
demonstrating a BeBox on the Village Tronic
stand and a Silicon Graphics O* machine on
the Lechner Verlag stand.

Overall, the show, though smaller, was still
absolutely packed and the exhibitors I spoke to
were all very pleased with their sales. Amiga
Oberland, one of Germany's biggest Amiga
software distributors completely sold out of their
stock of 1 50 Cyberstorm II cards - and that
was on the Friday.

AF 2 CD bonanza!

So. you've followed Amiga Shopper since
issue one - a total of more than five years
worth of important Amiga information. But all
good things come to an end and Amiga
Shopper is no exception.

Still, you can look on the bright
side, the bright side that is Amiga Format in
fact. To kick off your new Amiga year, why not
take a gander at the January issue of Amiga
Format breaking new ground as always by
being the first Amiga magazine to offer two
CDs on the cover at no extra cost!

Amiga Format has some of the
best journalists in the Amiga industry today
with Nick Veitch and Ben Vost at the helm. If
you are familiar with writers like Dave Taylor,
Paul Overaa, John Kennedy and Graeme
Sandiford from these pages, you'll be pleased
to find them in Amiga Format every month
from now on.

January 1997

Issue 71

January 97

ShopperNews

Phase 5 power up

As previously stated, Phase 5's
Power up program to bring the
PowerPC to Amiga users, is going
great guns. Along with the
Power PC- upgraded version of
Reflections shown at the Computer
96 show in Cologne and the other
companies producing software
which will use the new 240MHz
processor to great effect, Phase 5
are also busy converting certain
portions of the Amiga's aging OS to
the new chip.

At the moment, the dual
processor development card is in
Alpha stage (don't worry about all
those leads coming off the board,
they go into a machine that checks
the integrity of the board
electronically) with only a few
developers actually having a board
to work on, but Phase 5 promise
that December 96 will see the offical
beta boards get set out to any
company interested in developing for
a processor that is more than twenty
times more powerful that a 68060.

Wolf Dietrich, head of Phase 5,
promises to have a consumer
version of the board ready for next
spring for the A1 200 and A4000
and says that a multi-processor
version should be easy to implement
, which should come as a welcome
surprise for Amiga owners who want
the fastest possible rendering times.
For more details on the PowerUp
project contact Phase 5 on 0049
6171 5837B7 or mail them at:
mail@phase5.de

77?e component parts of the PPC

accelerator (sans fan). The

PowerPC part sits on top of a

standard CyberStorm card.

Phase S's PowerPC accelerator for the Amiga 4000 in full test mode. The
leads coming off the almost invisible board lead to a special chip testing
machine.

Blittersoft release Picasso IV

Amiga graphics cards are rapidly becoming as popular
as accelerators and Village Tronic have just upped
Wire stakes with their new Picasso IV. The Picasso IV
which should be available when you read this will be a
Zorroll/IM card suitable tor any Amiga with Zorro slots
(Including A1200 towers). A definite bonus for AGA
machine owners will be the built-in flicker fixer so that
you won't need to worry about having to use a
monitor that can sync down to 15kHZ any longer.
Becuase the card can hold 4MB of EDO ram 24-bit
resolutions are avaitble up to 1280 x 1024 and 256
colour screens at 1600 x 1200 are also possible.

The Picasso IV also has an internal PCI bus
architecture which will allow for additional modules to
be plugged into it The first module (which is currently
already in test stage) will be a TV tuner board which
will give you a video signal in a scalable window on a
Picasso Workbench. You wilt be able to grab an image
from this window. Also on the cards, so to speak will
be a new version of Pablo, Village Tronic's flawed
Video encoder, an MPEG decoder for video CDs,
Soundmodute containing a DSP and MIDI ports and

finally a 3D accelerator module complete with
dedicated RISC processor designed to give you
realtime textured and Gouraud shaded polygons.
Although no pricing has been set for the expansion
modules Village Tronic and Blittersoft have set a UK
price of just £299.95 for the PicassolV.

Village Tronic have also, in a shock move, just
released a new and updated set of drivers, not just for
their Picasso card, but also for some of the other
cards like Piccolo and Merlin.

This new software will support 16, 24 and 32-bit
Workbench screen modes much like Cybergraphx and
has been especially improved for Shapeshifter to offer
increased speed in Mac emulation and less screen
corruption when you are switched bach to your Amiga.
Even more interestingly, it not only offers multiple
screen and multiple card support for use with more
than one monitor but is completely compatible with
the Cybergraphx standard.

There has been no price for this software upgrade
yet. but if you contact Blittersoft on 01906 261466 I'm
sure they will be able to tell you.

Imagine on
the Amiga?
You choose

Impulse, longstanding Amiga
developers and creators of
Imagine are in a quandary. They
don't know if it still worth their
while to continue development on
the Amiga version of their popular
ray tracing package. Let them
know by contacting their
in dependant surveyor Mike Nixon
on 001 612 425 0557, mail him at
mikenixon@gnn.com or visit the
Imagine website at
http://www.cocilfLin.com.

AWeb hits
its pace

The new updated version of AWeb
certainly seems to be a major
improvement. New features
include tables, pop-up menus,
greyscale palette support, more
MIME types and all-round better
performance. The new version is
available free of charge to
registered users on the AWeb
home page at

http://www.networkx.com/ami
trix/get-u pdate.html.

Petro hangs on
- Sassenrath
quits in disgust

This month has seen an inordinate
amount of flaming on Usenet
regarding the prospective buyers
of the Amiga VIScorp. Petro
Tyschtchenko, general manager of
AT, offered a conciliatory statement
and support which was swiftly
followed by a public statement
from Carl Sassenrath, inventor of
CDXL. saying that he was
disgusted with VIScorp for various
reasons including the fact that he
had been owed money for more
than three months. He also
accuses the VIScorp management
of incompetence, particularly with
regard to their attitude towards
both Carl himself and also RJ
Mical whom they had originally
asked Sassenrath to recruit.. Both
statements can be found at the
Amiga Web Directory if you wish
to examine them in detail.

The Amiga Web Directory is at
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/
although more local mirrors are
also available.

Issue 71

January 1997

ShopperFeature

The End

David Taylor

It's the end of
the world as we

know it...

The whole AS team gathers together to revel in past glories and ponder future failings.

We aren't going to dwell
on this, but it is the final
issue. So, we all got
together to say what we
thought the chances
were of the Amiga bouncing back. What
brought us all to the Amiga in the first
place and what made it so special? For the
last time, we reveal what we all think
about this great machine's fortunes.

David Taylor

Deputy Editor

When I first saw the Amiga. I had not been
involved with computers since the Spectrum
days because they seemed to have stagnated.
I'd seen the IBM PC and it didn't seem to be
able to offer anything. Home computers were
not really advancing and then all of a sudden
here was a machine that blew my socks off.
Being a lowly student, I did what any decent

scrounger would do - I got my parents to buy
me one. Ostensibly it was going to be used to
write a book my father had been commissioned
to do and that was indeed what it spent the first
summer doing. When I could stop him from
playing Monkey Island, that was. 1 think everyone
was impressed with what a single floppy
machine could do. We'd never seen graphics
like this before.

As time went on, I used : the machine for all
my study and got seriously into the games.
Then, I discovered that there was a whole other
side to the machine and one that was
remarkably easy to master. A hard drive and new
A1 200 followed and then an accelerator card.
Suddenly everything was quick, clean and fast. It
was an eye opener. The machine which I had
thought was tops, had been beaten by its own
successor.

After a chance encounter, I began to work
for the oldest Amiga magazine around and soon
started to compile their Coverdisks. I loved the
challenge of cramming in as much as possible
from the wealth of software that was around,
I moved to AS and then took over when Sue left
and have tried to keep the magazine on course
for the last seven months.

The really sickening part about the Amiga
has been watching it stand still for the past

"In a dream
world, the Amiga
will be bought up,
revamped and

bounce back... but
this is the real

world."

few years while the PC made real in roads into
the loyal users. It's not possible to still say that
the PC is useless. It isn't. Windows 95 is not a
perfect system and is incredibly sluggish, but it
does have powerful architecture that it can run
on. 3D rendering on a Pentium is a lot faster.
OK. it does cost £1 000 for a system, but so
does a decent Amiga setup. Let's face facts, the
standard A 1 200 is an under-powered machine
in today's world. I had been loathe to move to
the PC, but six months ago, I realised that for
professional reasons I would have to. I stumped
up £1 500 and promptly watched the price of
the same system fall by a third over the next few
months, I've now been working lull time on PC
mags for about 6 months and working for AS in
the evenings. It has been gruelling, but I think it
does show how hesitant I have been to leave
the Amiga.

It is still a wonderful machine and if it can
do what you want it to then you have to be mad
to leave it just to keep up with the Jones'. I know
a lot of Amiga users have done, some because
they need the PC compatibility [let's be honest,
MS compatibility), but others because they think
that the grass is greener. You have to hand it to
Microsoft; they do a great ad campaign as can
Intel. II only the Amiga had the same backing we
might be looking at a very different future.

In a dream world, the Amiga will be bought
up, revamped and bounce back. I'll come back
to AS which will have been relaunched as the
world's biggest selling computer magazine. But
this is the real world and VIScorp, if they ever
manage to buy the Amiga, have a mountain
ahead of them. They have always claimed to be
behind a new desktop machine. The trouble is
the custom chips that made it ground breaking
have now become a hindrance. A whole new
system needs designing along with a complete,
Internet orientated, OS and Workbench. To
design a system from the ground up will take
years. They may have been working behind the
scenes on it already, but how far have they got?
A new machine that sells (because a new
machine with the sort of R&D required as
mentioned will have to have a high price tag) is
looking slim.

Issue 71

It looks very much like the
floor underneath my desk!

What about their EDs? Well,
if they have Amiga compatibility
fine, but they will still be using out
of date technology. The Amiga's WWW
capabilities don't stretch to the huge array of
Rug-ins and extras used by Internet Explorer 3
(Microsoft) and Navigator (Netscape), You can
browse the WWW using it. but you can't get
the full experience. You're not missing much at
the moment but that may well change as the
Internet technology gets more and more
established. Add to this the fact that Acorn
have been rolling their Network Computer
(the flash name for a plug and play
hardware Internet solution) for months and will
start selling in March for under £300 and you
can see that the EO has a battle before it is
even produced.

None of this changes the fact that the
Amiga, especially the A1 200 and A4000. are
excellent machines. If your interested in WR
DTP, graphics, and games (and to an extent 3D
if you've got the processor for it) then why
change from something that has always done
what you want. It will still be able to run the
same programs with the same ability ten years
from now. Stick with it and save yourself a lot of
money and aggravation.

Full time, I'm working as the CD-ROM editor
for PC Plus - Future's biggest selling computer
title. Claimed by the PC after all these years.
Although AS has now gone, I won't be leaving
the Amiga completely. I'll continue to compile the
Coverdisks for Amiga Format and write any
reviews they need doing. ■

John Kennedy

So, this is my last ever
article for Amiga Shopper. I
find this sad not only
because it means the end of
a unique magazine, but also
because of what this says
about the state of Amiga
itself. I was at the Toulouse meeting, and
thought that there indeed might be a future
for the Amiga, first as a set-top box and later
as a development tool. However, negotiations
have once again moved with the speed of a
dead whale, and it's now very probable that
there isn't going to be any kind of positive
future. It's too late. The PC caught up and
passed the stagnating Amiga in terms of
graphics, sound and even the operating
system. The future of digital TV means that
the Amiga won't be powerful enough to cut
it as a set-top box, and the "Amiga
compatible" computers are destined to be
expensive follies.

It was great while it lasted, but we're on
the last lap now. I'll continue to write for
Amiga magazines for as long as t can, but it's
inevitable that I'll be concentrating more on
the Internet and PC side of things as time
progresses. It's time to move on.

Issue 71

Paul Overaa

To some extent I suppose it
was inevitable that Amiga
Shopper, being a specialist
mag, would be affected. I'm
particularly sad about the
loss since it's been one of
the few mags that went out
of its way to cater for serious users. What
really annoys me about the current Amiga
situation however is that none of the
difficulties have much to do with the technical
issues surrounding the Amiga as a platform
itself. Software- wise the Amiga (even now) is
only just beginning to show what it's really
capable and on top of that of course, it is still
the most cost effective platform around.

Like many people I've hedged my bets by
continuing to take an interest in the PC but
I'm certainly not giving up on the Amiga and,
needless to say, my tutorials in Amiga Format
will continue. Total Amiga C is also now
scheduled to appear in the next few months.

One worry of course is that there will
doubtless be a number of long suffering
Amiga users who see this as yet another sign
of the end of the Amiga. It isn't and in fact I
think perhaps the best thing any Amiga user
can do at the moment is to get themselves on
the net There is still massive support for the
Amiga amongst serious users around the
world and, without doubt, a web/ Internet
connection gives you a direct link to that
community.

January 1996

Goodbye Shopper
So the end has begun.
Amiga Shopper has turned
full circle since that great
beginning many years ago
when its sister publication
Amiga Format first released
a preview of the ultimate magazine for serious
Amiga users.

Since that great day, Amiga Shopper has
been the epitome of what I feel a good Amiga
magazine should be about. No games, plenty
Of editorial On what matters to the serious
Amiga user and above all, it was a bloody
good read.

Although many may disagree with its
direction in the last few years, it was still an
essential buy for the dedicated serious Amiga
user because 'Shopper was different to the
rest of the magazine crop.' Yet, I know better
than most how difficult it is to keep a serious
Amiga magazine like Shopper afloat while the
market around you disappears and the "know
alls" start whining about things they know
'nout about

The end of Amiga Shopper tells us many
things about the Amiga and where it goes
from here. The most poignant message is that
support for the Amiga will continue to
diminish while the Amiga community shrinks
and quite a few of those left continue to
leave their hands firmly fixed in their pockets
while retailers, magazines and others
supporting the platform continue to disappear
from our midst.

It doesn't help when those handling the
machine are making one balls up after
another but at the end of the day, the Amiga
doesn't stand still just because Escom,
VIScorp or who ever owns it can't get their act
together. There are plenty of others out their
wanting to support it, to make it better, if only
everyone who owns an Amiga, would support
them.

It may be too late to save Shopper, but
those of us left can keep the Amiga dream
alive if we continue to actively support those
supporting us and therefore avoid any more
obituaries. I would like to thank everyone
associated with Shopper, it was more than a
magazine. It has been a friend and it's always
sad when you lose a friend.

ShopperFeature

Printers

Larry Hickmott

Find out which printer really is best for the
Amiga. Larry Hickmott is the man who knows.

Super Test

One of the first peripherals
Amiga owners tend to buy
for their machine is a printer.
Many find it difficult to know
which one to choose
because of the wide array of choices and a
lack of available information on which
ones work with Arnigas.

Like anything, buying the right printer is
reliant on you having an in-depth knowledge of
computer printers and that can only come two

Top 10 Points..,

...for Buying a Printer

• 1. Do I need colour or black and whits?

• 2. If I only need black and white, can I
afford a laser?

• 3. Is the printer I want supported by either
TurboPrint or Studio II or in the case of
Epson Stylus's, EnPrint (Eyetech).

• 4. Does the printer have a compatible
parallel port. Avoid printers with names like
DeskWriter because they are produced for
Macintoshes and may only have an
AppleTalk port which is no good if you have
an Amiga.

• 5. If in doubt, don't buy it. What Is the
point in buying a printer that "looks" the
business but may not work with the Amiga.
Make sure it is supported.

• 6. Look into the consumables side of
things. Compare the price of ink cartridges
and availability of the special paper for that
model.

• 7. Don't just go on price. Make sure the
printer suits the type of work you do. If all
you do is one otfs, then an ink-jet maybe
fine, but if you produce work where you
need lots of copies, then maybe a laser
would be better,

• 8. If buying a laser, get a PostScript one If
you can afford It. They no longer cost the
earth although are far from being "cheap".
Adobe PostScript is also going to be more
reliable than those listed as being
"Postscript Compatible".

• 9. Four Colour Ink-jets produce better
graphics than 3 colour ones printers.

• 10. Try and see it in action on an Amiga
before laying out the dough. With ink-jets,
see how welt it handles plain paper, while if
testing a laser, see how well it copes with
duplexing pages.

ways; through experience or from information
sources like magazines such as Amiga Shopper.

Unlike a hard drive or a number of other
add-ons, adding a printer to an Amiga requires a
number of things before the printer can be used.
Like a Centronics parallel cable to join Amiga
and printer. These are the same as those used
for adding a printer to a PC. The same can't be
said for the cables that join printers to a
Macintosh, so don't buy a printer which is
supposed to be attached to a Macintosh (unless
you have some Macintosh hardware in your
Amiga that has on it an Apple Talk port).

Next you need a printer driver. This helps the
printer understand what the Amiga is saying to
it, by converting the commands coming from the
Amiga into a language the printer can
understand.

It can't be just any old printer driver though
because standard Workbench printer drivers in
conjunction with the normal Workbench Printer
preferences programs, produce awful looking
output compared to that produced by printing
enhancement packages. These are packages
which come with printer drivers for many modern
printers as well as enhanced printing
preferences functions and utilities for printing
pictures better than you can from other
applications like your trusty word processor.

Avoid the trap of choosing a printer first and
then trying to find a driver to suit it. Not a wise
way of doing things. A better method is to make
a list of the printers you feel are suitable for the
work you want to do and then check that an
Amiga printer driver is available.

You can make life a lot easier for yourself if
you follow some simple guidelines. Choose a
printer from the big three; Hewlett-Packard,
Epson or Canon. There are plenty of other
printers from other manufacturers and some may
even be cheaper (and better), but it won't be
worth a penny if there isn't a dedicated printer
driver to use it with an Amiga.

There are exceptions to the big three rule
such as pin printers (like those from Citizen,
Panasonic and so on) and specialist printers like
the PRINTiva from Citizen (reviewed here). If you
want to be sure of compatibility, now and in the
future though, then stay with HP, Epson or
Canon - they are the companies generally
supported by those making Amiga drivers.

What type of printer?

Before you make the decision on what printer
you need, you will probably need to decide on
what "type" you want. Should it be a pin printer

Printing pictures is best when using either
Turbo Print's Print Manager or the "Studio
Picture Printing Application" that comes with
the Studio II Professional package.

or an ink-jet? Maybe a laser would be better?
Only you can answer the question because the
answer depends on what type of work you do.

For general use, I would say the ink-jet is
best, but if you do a lot of work where an impact
printer is required (multi-part invoicing, tractor
fed labels and so on), then it has to be an
impact printer. However, maybe you require a
printer that is capable of producing lots of
copies and if you don't need colour, then a laser
is probably a better bet.

Within each of these categories (pin
printers, ink-jets and lasers), are other groups. If
you're choosing an ink-jet, then you need to
decide between a black and white or colour
printer, or models that can be both at the same
time. Printers like the DeskJet 400 and the
Stylus 200, can have colour or black print
heads, but not both together.

Buying a laser is no less easier. You need to
choose whether to have PostScript or not and
on an Amiga, PostScript is very useful for
reducing print times and proofing documents.
For me, PostScript is essential. Over the years, I
have collected many printers and it's been my
experience that when it comes to lasers, those
produced by Hewlett-Packard are generally the
best, while for ink-jets, either Epson or Canon
will do nicely. This explains why I have a number
of HP lasers and a colour Epson ink-jet.

What is most notable these days is how far
we have come in terms of quality. The progress
is so remarkable that today I can produce colour
covers for CDs using an every day colour ink-jet
and you can hardly see the difference between it
and covers printed on a press. Lets take a more
detailed look at some options.

January 1996

Issue 71

Larry Hickmott

Printers

Shop per Feature

Citizen PRINTiva 600C

It isn't often that a printer comes along
that is so different it turns out to be a
whole new learning experience. But when
the Citizen PRINTiva came for a visit, it was
a whole new ball game. Let me start by
saying that this printer should not be
compared to ink-jets and lasers. At least
not in terms of quality and so on. The
PRINTiva is a different category of printer
and as such, when deciding whether to buy
a laser or an ink-jet, perhaps you should
also look at the dry ink technology used by
the PRINTiva.

For example, lets say you want to print using
metallic colours. The PRINTiva can do this
although I didn't get given any to try, so I'll have
to take Citizen's word for it that it works. Maybe
you want to print colour on glossy card. The
PRINTiva will, an ink-jet won't and nor will your
budget laser. There are many more examples of
the things the PRINTiva will do that an ink-jet
and lasers won't. Printing on art paper for
example.

(Trrr,.

;

Using printers like the PRINTiva on an Amiga is
child's play thanks to TurboPrint.

"the Citizen
PRINTiva is an

interesting printer
that can produce
excellent results on
the right media and
for specialist work
is in a class of its

own.

Ink Ribbons

The PRINTiva comes with four ink "ribbons" The
instructions on fitting them were hardly very
good but I'm told by Citizen that they can be
fitted in any order. Because each colour is a
separate ribbon, you only replace what is
required if they run out. The ribbons cost around
£3.99 each while metallic ones are £9.99.

To test the PRINTiva, I used TurboPrint 4.1 .
Things got off to a bad start - the first print tests
had to be aborted because I ran out of memory
in my 6Mb Amiga 4000. Unlike the ink-jets I was
testing, TurboPrint seemed to be storing the
page in memory and then printing it in one go.
Which because of the way the PRINTiva prints
the page, was understandable.

When printing a colour image, I found the
PRINTiva pnnted the Cyan colour first, then
Magenta, then Yellow and finally Black. What is

interesting about this though, is that the paper
feeds right through the printer as one colour is
printed and is then pulled back into the printer
for the next colour to be done.

The quality of the images produced by the
PRINTiva were quite good although it's a very
different looking finish to the ones produced by
ink-jets. What was noticeable in the solid colours
was some breaking up on textured plain paper.
Use it with the ever smooth Mellotex, and the
resulting image was much better.

After much testing, I was left thinking that
this is probably not a printer to be used for every
day type of printing. A ribbon I'm told will do 60
A4 pages with 5% coverage. In real terms, the
figure is probably a lot less (perhaps half). So, if
the majority of your work is T-Shirt printing,
printing on glossy and metallic cards as well as
art papers, then the PRINTiva maybe just the
thing for you. For newsletters and alike, I don't
think so.

Citizen PRINTiva 600C

Price: £439

Supplier : Citizen UK

Contact: 01753 5841 1 1

Verdict: 84%

Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 690

The €90 is the latest in a long line of
personal DeskJets. It's a model I'm
rather fond of as I started out with a
DeskJet 500 many years ago. This new
model is designed to produce photographic

quality colour images by using the optional
HP Photo Cartridge and HP Photo Paper.

That's the theory anyway. In practice, I found
little difference when I replaced the black ink
cartridge for the Photo one. The biggest

improvement came when printing
on the semi gloss Photo paper
but then that would apply if you
also had the black cartridge
installed instead of the
Photo one.

When printing normal
documents made up of text and
graphics, I was disappointed with
the results (in relation to those
from a Colour Stylus 500 or Canon
610) although it has to be
remembered that this printer is
priced well below much of its
opposition.

Even in the supposedly
'600x600" mode, text was no
where near as sharp as that from
the Stylus or the DeskJet 870CXL

It is probably acceptable though for those just
starting out with a printer and although text is
slightly disappointing, photos do come out quite
well, although again, are not as good as those
from the Epson Stylus or the 870CXi.

With a street price of under £220. the £690
is very well priced for a 4 colour ink-jet. I
wouldn't say that the results from it when
attached to an Amiga are as good as that from
the Epson 500 (which is around £30 more
expensive), but unless you are very fussy, you
can't help but be impressed at what a printer so
cheap can produce.

On the minus side, the design still
incorporates a separate PSU. one of my pet
hates because they have this knack of making
life miserable when they get in the way, fall off
the desk and all sorts of other things.

Hewlett-Packard
DeskJet 690C

Price: £262

Supplier: Hewlett- Packard
Contact: 0990 47 47 47

Verdict: 86%

Issue 71 I

January 1996 I

ShopperFeature

Printers

Larry Hickmott

Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 6MP

Over the last six years, I have had the
pleasure of using many Hewlett-
Packard lasers and wouldn't choose
anything else unless it could be proven that
I would gain from making that choice. The
reason I find HP lasers so agreeable is that
I punish my HP lasers every day and they've
all taken the punishment I dish out and are
still taking it today.

So it was with great delight I tested the
latest HP laser, the 6MP (PostScript version of
the 6P). Looking a lot like its previous
incarnation, the 5 MP, version six of this popular
personal printer has some interesting features.

First of all, it can print up to eight pages a
minute, making it twice as fast as the 4MP I
currently use. The toner cartridge in the 6MP
(like the 5M!P) also holds more toner (than
previous models like the 4MP) with the manual
telling me it's good for 4,500 sheets at 5%
coverage. You won't get that in real use but it's
good to know you won't need to change toner
cartridges as often, This coming from someone
who changes as many as two or three toner
cartridges a day during heavy production.

Like the 5MP before it, the 6MP has the
same design which I found was compact enough
to sit on a small table above all the peripherals
on the desk here. Attaching the cables is as
usual, fiddly with annoying plastic covers having
to be removed before the cables can be fitted. A
well intent ion ed move by the designer but a pig
in practice.

The LaserJet 6 also has no control panel, so
software to control is essential. On the Amiga,
we don't get the bells and whistles the software
for the PC contains, but packages like Studio II
and TurboPrint both enabled me to use the
printer (Studio II seems better equipped for this).

The quality of output was as usual, up to
HP's normal high standards although with the
driver packages on the Amiga having got a lot
better over the last few years, this is as much to
do with the printer as the software driving it.
Having said that, the quality in Postscript mode
on the "M" model is also much improved over
earlier models like the 4P but little different to
the 5P

Like the LaserJet 5, there is a manual paper
feed which lets you feed the printer multiple
sheets (up to 1 00), This came in handy when
printing labels and envelopes as these cannot be
placed in the cassette.

Both paper feeds (Cassette and manual) are
quite reliable when printing single sided work but

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to configure your printer, with this one letting you
choose your model printer as well as many other
aspects like printing to file and so on.

"a 600 dpi printer
with a hundred
sheet manual
feed that led to
further
development."

the 6MP I had, didn't like doing duplexing where
both sides are printed by feeding the paper
through twice. This may have been due to the
new pick up rollers because the 4M Plus I have,
hardly ever misfeeds when duplexing pages.

An important improvement is the increase in
the duty cycle to 1 2,000 sheets a month,
enough for most personal and small business
users. To put your mind at rest, in case of
trouble, the LaserJet 6 comes with a one year
warranty upgradeable to three years.

A fairly significant upgrade although not to
us on the Amiga, is the LaserJet's use of version
6 of the PCL printer control language, This is
backwards compatible to version 5e and is
supported by Studio II and TurboPrint 4.1 . Both
printing enhancement packages worked fine with
the LaserJet 6 although given the choice, I would
choose Studio II Professional as it seems to
control the printer better.

La serJet 6MP

Price: S;845
Supplier: Hewlett Packard
Contact: 0990 474747

Verdict: 91%

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choosing the paper type, density and the colour
mode.

January 1997

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Issue 71

Larry Hickmoti

Printers

ShopperFeature

Enhancing your prints

Programs such as Art Effect are now
supporting print enhancement packages.

Many people think of a printing enhancement
package as a printer driver, but it's much more
than that. As well as providing bang up to date
printer drivers for the latest printers, print
enhancement packages like Studio II
Professional and TurboPrint, also enhance the
output quite considerably, especially if a lot of
what you produce is graphics orientated.

You won't gain a lot if all you do is text,
but when you have a picture of muttley your
favourite dog (or should that be cartoon
character), then a print enhancement
package will help you ensure that the colours
in the image on the paper match closely those
on-screen.

They will never be exact, but they will be
closer than if you tried to print using the
standard Workbench printer prefs functions.

The quality of graphics from programs tike
DrawStudio is now as good as you'll get on any
machine thanks to TurboPrint and Studio II
Professional.

Most print enhancement packages will
consist of three parts: printer drivers, print
preferences functions and a picture printing
application for printing pictures only. Unlike the
PC or Macintosh, you can't always produce the
best results printing pictures from an
application like your word processor and so if
all you want to do is print pictures, then using a
dedicated application from TurboPrint or Studio
is the way to go.

The question is though, at almost fifty quid,
which printing program do you go for? Both are
closely matched, although I do find myself
using TurboPrint for colour work and Studio II
when using lasers. This is mainly because I
don't have time to fiddle with the default
settings of both programs.

Saying that, there are some other things
you should consider. Studio II for example will
work better with PageStream thanks to its
special server link with PageStream. The same
applies to ImageFX, Art Effects meanwhile will
print direct to both TurboPrint and Studio II,

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Compare the preferences available with an
application like TurboPrint to those for a
standard Workbench and you will see that
TurboPrint wins by a long straight.

Because each package has its strengths,
there is no right answer to which is better
although doing a survey of many of the readers
of my Amiga magazine, I found that Studio II
was the most popular but found that many
who had both, preferred TurboPrint, again for
colour work.

Studio II Professional

HiSoft

0500 223 060

TurboPrint 4.1
Wizard Developments
01322 527 S00

Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 400

One of the cheapest ways to get into
colour printing is by buying a printer
like the DeskJet 400. With a street price of
£151.00 (colour £161), the 400 is one of the
cheapest entry level printers there is.
Initially, this printer was only available in
Dixons, although I believe it is now widely
sold in most electrical and computer stores.

The 400 looks very different to the other
DeskJets available from HP in that the paper tray
can be folded away when the printer isn't in use.
As such, the printer has a very small foot print
and the only thing that really spoils it, is that the
power supply is a separate "brick™ which can
cause damage to unprotected footsies.

There are few controls on the printer but
then few are needed, especially if you have a
package like Studio II or TurboPrint. You can use
the printer with either a black ink cartridge or a 3
colour one (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow). Colour
was probably acceptable to those who have
never used colour before, being on par with the

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Studio II Prof comes with a number of different
"Prefs" programs for different makes of printers
as well as some utilities for configuring printers
like LaserJets and Epson Colour Stylus's.

Issue 71

Epson Stylus 200. while the black print cartridge
produced very good text and greyscale images,
especially for a printer this cheap. This is more to
do with the enhancement software driving the
printer than anything going on within the printer.

None of the printing packages I used to
drive the DeskJet 400, mention it by name, but I
had no problems using it with both Studio II and
TurboPrint. Well almost no problems. There were
dark lines noticeable where the strips output by
the Amiga software overlap, but this I suspect is
more an Amiga software problem than hardware.
The banding varied from package to package
and what print driver was being used.

Overall, the DeskJet 400 is a good buy for
the budget conscience Amiga user although it is
up against some stiff competition in the form of
the Epson Stylus 200, which is a very similar
printer but can take more paper and has a

January 1997

"...the DeskJet
400 is a budget
priced printer
which produced
first-class
monochrome
results and oh, by
the way, can also
print in colour.

straighter paper path than the 400, where the
media paper is fed from the front and comes
back out the front having been turned around
1 80 degrees. It should be pointed out that the
400 does have a rear paper feed for single
sheets. The best results came with Studio II.

Hewlett-Packard
DeskJet 400

PHce: £151 {Colour £161)

Supplier: Hewlett-Packard
Contact: 0990 474747

Verdict: 86%

ShopperFeature

Printers

Larry Hickmott

Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 870CXI

The DeskJet 870CXi is a new colour ink-
jet printer from Hewlett-Packard
replacing the popular HP DeskJet 850C. The
870CXi offers a number of significant
improvements although few will benefit
Amiga users. Improvements such as
networking for example.

A speed increase has also been made
possible by the use of a 20Mhz RISC processor
enabling the printer to process incoming data
more efficiently, contributing to a significant
throughput increase. The speed of your page to
the printer is thus quicker than with previous
models but this speed is still more dependent on
the processor speed of your Amiga than that in
the printer. Print to disk and then send the pages
to the printer, is one way of maximizing the speed
increase although I didn't see ihe through-put
that the press releases quoted

The look of the printer hasn't changed much
from previous models although at least this

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Studio II Professional enables you access many
of the special features in printers like the 800
series from Hewlett-Packard.

model does have an integral power supply.
Driving the DeskJet, none of the packages again
mention the 870CXi by name, although both
Studio and TurboPrint produced stunning results
with it (I feel TurboPrint edged it in the quality
stakes when printing from normal Amiga
applications).

Black text at 600 dpi was almost laser like
and colour photographs were very life like in their
appearance. Overall, the DeskJet 870 performed
very well and given the chance, I'd be happy to
keep it here churning out colour documents,
because like HP lasers, it does seem quite
robust and the ink cartridges are much larger
than those in the small DeskJets. With that robust
feel, comes noise and plenty of it although with
the stereo turned up, I soon managed to avoid
hearing it at work.

With a street price of £350 (plus extra for
your printing enhancement software), the
870CXi is only a little more expensive than a
Colour Stylus 500 but would be better equipped
to handle a heavy workload. That said, the new
Canon 620 with 720 dpi and separate ink
cartridges is also a contender although I didn't
get to test it and so can't say just how well it
compares.

Hewlett-Packard
DeskJet 870CXi

£420

Supplier: Hewlett-Packard
Contact: 0990 47 47 47

Verdict: 92%

"...the 870CXI was
giving some real
stick in the two
days I got to use
it and overall, it
produced
stunning black
and white results
and first rate
colour...."

Other Printers

This was supposed to be a printer
roundup of all the available products
but printer manufacturers like Canon seem
a bit stretched for review models at the
time of writing which has meant that this
has turned into a bit of a Hewlett-Packard
benefit. That said, we do have information
on other models available such as those
from Epson and Canon.

We haven't reviewed Epson printers here
because at the time of writing, there weren't any
new models we haven't already reviewed in
Amiga Shopper. Epson however, will be
releasing some new heavyweight laser printers
to take on the HP 5 series, so keep your eyes
peeled for information on those in AF.

Epson Printers

Epson 500 Stylus (reviewed Issue 67):
Four colour ink-jet that is capable of 720 dpi.
Produces superb results, especially on
dedicated Epson high resolution papers. Well
priced as well. Requires either Studio II
Professional, En Print or TurboPrint.

Epson 200 Stylus (Reviewed in issue 70):

This is a dual personality printer that can be set
up to print in black and white or colour by using
different print heads and cartridges. The 200 is

priced much lower than the 500 but it should be
remembered that the quality is not as good and
the 500 is a true 720 dpi printer while the 200
is advertised as a 720 printer, but on the Amiga
is restricted to 360 dpi. The 720 dpi on the PC
is more a software hack than anything to do with
the printer itself.

Epson 820:

For those wanting 720 dpi monochrome output,
the 820 maybe just your thing. Like the Stylus
500, this is a true 720 dpi printer but its only for
doing black and white.

Epson 1500:

An A2 printer with a colour option, 720 dpi
output and a sheet feeder. This is quite an
unusual printer compared to the usual type
plotters used in CAD and other large format
areas. The 1 500, priced at around £590, will
find favour with those who do posters and alike,
although I haven't as yet seem whether it will
work with the current crop of printer drivers on
the Amiga. Certainly worth investigating
because printers of this size at this price, are
very scarce if available at all

Canon Printers:

Canon BJC-240:

The 240 model replaces the BJC-210 and now
uses Canons "revolutionary" new Photorealism

and Photo ink technologies, I haven't as yet
been able to see how revolutionary this
technology is by the way. The 240 is a true 360
by 360 dpi printer and comes with a 1 00 sheet
paper feeder and has the 200 series usual small
footprint. There is also a black cartridge
available for monochrome printing.

Canon SJC-4550:

An A3 printer for under 500 pounds. The Canon
BJC-4550 is a printer in the style of the 4000
series but enables you to print onto A3 paper,
making it ideal for posters and proofing
magazine spreads. Oo remember that this hasn't
been tested with Amiga software but Canon do
produce some of the most Amiga compatible
printers there are, so I don't think this will be a
problem. The printer is a 360 dpi by 720 dpi
although bear in mind that the 720 may be a
smoothing function and not a true 720 dpi.

Canon BJC-620:

Picking up speed in the 600 series printers is
the BJC-620, which we are told is twice as fast
at printing photographs or colour intensive
images as the 610 it replaces. Whether this
applies to the Amiga I don't know. This is still a
dedicated colour printer with separate ink
cartridges for all colours making it economical to
refill when a colour runs out, The 620 also has
the 720 by 720 resolution of the 610. ■

January 1997

Issue 71

David Taylor

Accelerator board

ShopperReview

Power on the cheap?
David Taylor finds out
whether a sub-£1 00
accelerator can really be true
or whether it's just a way of
shifting substandard gear.

68030

If someone came up to you in the
street and tried to sell you a board for
your A 1200 which was known to have
problems, would you be interested? I
thought not. So, why would you want
to buy a board from Power Computing that
might be a pig in a poke? Well, this board
contains a 68030 25Mhz chip, a 68882 and
4Mb RAM and all comes for less than £100
and it does work. Sort of.

This board has been around for a while but
supposedly had problems working with
PCMCIA slots- especially if you had more than
the 4Mb RAM fitted. However, not everybody
desires to make use of the PCMCIA slot. The
Squirrel and its successor the Surfin' Squirrel
have proved very popular SCSI adapters and
some people have CD-ROM drives that fit
straight into the slot, if not you may never use it.
(the PCMCIA slot, is the credit card type one on
the left of your Amiga.)

The question is, if this is a power
consumption problem, could you also use the
IDE expansion kits or the DataFlyer SCSI kit
which both fit onto and expand the internal IDE
port. If this is the case, and the card doesn't
have a SCSI module option like some cards,

then the expandability of your machine is
severely limited.

"The price of RAM
has been falling
steadily for the

pasf year."

The reason the board is now available so
cheaply is not solely down to these possible
problems. The price of RAM has been falling
steadily for the last year and you can now pick
up 4Mb SIMMs for under £20.

When we got the board and tried it out with
a machine it booted up fine. Looking good. As
you'd expect, a 68030 at 25Mhz runs about five
times as fast as a standard A1 200 and the extra
4Mb is enough to transform your machine. In
fact, I only have an extra 4Mb in my machine
normally and whenever I need any more I make
use of virtual memory. It's not ideal, and more
RAM is always welcome, but in general use you
won't need it. The way things are going though,

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This Power board is a real bargain - 68030 acceleration

and extra RAM

but only if it works on your machine.

Issue 71

January 1997

you should have more memory because
programs are going to continue to get higher
system requirements. These do tend to be
graphics programs, DTP and 3D rendering but if
you have these programs running, albeit slowly
and with difficulty, on a standard A1 200. then
the difference with this processor and extra
RAMI will be incredible.

Think about whether you want to continue
using these programs or whether you'd want to
upgrade. You can get this board with BMb
which would make it a 1 0Mb machine - enough
for most people - but you then need to keep in
mind the problems mentioned previously.

Another problem came to light when we
tested the card in a second machine. The card
itself is fairly short and stocky and it can be tight
getting it into the trapdoor and forcing it closed.
In fact, the door had to be left off which is hardly
satisfactory. More worrying was the fact that
with the board fitted, the hard drive wasn't
recognised. Although it powered up and started
to spin, the machine wouldn't boot the drive and
didn't list it in the system diagnostic.

So it seems there might be problems with
some hard drives and this card. The drive was a
JTS 750Mb drive, which is large but not a big
power user. To be sure we removed the extra
floppy and took off the SIMM and set the
jumpers. It stil! refused to boot with the hard
drive, although the board was recognised.

With all of this to digest, the choice about
buying one of these is entirely up to you. We
can't advise one way or another (hence the lack
of verdict). If it works on your machine and won't
cause expansion problems, then it is an
incredible bargain that can push your system
into the future. If it doesn't then there's no point.
Maybe Power will guarantee that you can return
the board for a full, no hassle refund. (If the
board is faulty and isn't fit for the purpose it was
sold, then a refund is within your rights anyway).
If they will, then you've nothing to lose. ■

Power 68030

Price: £99

Supplier: Power Com puting

"Contact: 01234 273000

Verdict: N/A

ShopperReview

Art package

David Taylor

DrawStudio

Is it a drawing package? is it a paint program? Is it a DTP
package? Is it a structured drawing package? No, it's all of them,
as David Taylor discovers.

There is always a need among
reviewers to be able to label
something. It makes our lives
easier because we know that
readers will have a common
point of reference that means they'll know
what we are talking about. DrawStudio
doesn't let you do this because it isn't any
single package - it is a versatile program
that defies pigeon holing.

First and foremost, it is an art program. It's
not a paint package, in that there's no animation
or cutting of brushes. However, you can draw
some very complex images. It works on the
obvious supposition that all images are made up
of lines and colours. You can therefore design a
picture (and the use of boxes, fills, curves and
lines makes it feel much more like designing
than drawing) using any number of them.

Object Based
Approach

Every box, circle, line and curve is an object.
Each object has its own set of attributes and
can be kept separate from other objects. This
way, you can re-size and adjust any object,
changing its colour, line thickness and fill type.
Working with them you can build up your
picture, by placing them over each other - build
up a wheel from circles and squares for
instance. When you have a component of your
picture ready, you can group all of the objects

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The package
can warp
objects so
powerfully for
use within a
picture that it
outstrips all
other

packages for
this on the
Amiga.

together to make a single object for ease of use
within the rest of the picture.

This form of building relies on the object
based approach to drawing that the program
takes. As it has been discussed in depth in our
preview last month and also in our Coverdisk
pages this month, we'll not go into too much
depth. It works brilliantly and because it makes it

so ease to correct mistakes when you can see
more of the picture emerge, it means that
almost anyone can persevere and create
complex images.

Filling objects can be done through the
attributes for the object and you can have no fill,
or set colours - colours can even be made
semi-transparent so that parts of objects

Getting to grips with some of the features.

1) Draw your line and make it as
curvaceous as you like - this is an
ideal time to use the bezier curve
tool that allows the creation of
smooth curves.

2) Choose a font for the text from
the Font menu item and type the
text into a self-sizing text box.

3) Select a colour for the text.
Make sure that the display type is
set to a suitable buffer if you
want to see it in colour on screen
- otherwise it will appear I -oft.

4) Select the text box and the
curve (use shift to select more
than one object at once). Then
choose Text on a curve and the
text will be fitted around the curve.

January 1996

Issue 71

David Taylor

Art package

ShopperReview

beneath can be seen, or bitmap images. You
can import images to inside the object and have
them either tiled or stretched to fit. Two minor
constraints apply - bitmap fills cannot be made
semi-transparent and you cannot import large
objects and select a part of them. The second
part makes you see why this package is a
supplement to paint programs and image
manipulators, not a replacement.

Painters' progress

The program's strengths go beyond the simple
drawing area and thankfully, it isn't just that it
can do more - it has truly powerful features in
other areas. It's text handling is excellent,
allowing you to create very funky looking text on
your pictures very easily - as you can see
below. Whether you want to think of this as a
simple DTP package for pictures or as a
program that can do some very simple DTP. is
up to you. There is no doubt that it would be an
excellent choice for designing a poster, but it
couldn't be used for booklet layouts. As such,
it also must appeal to video titlers with a
chance to develop some stunning effects,
although it might be a bit limited because of
the stationary side.

The program does not make use of Amiga
bitmap fonts, only Adobe Type 1 fonts. There are
plenty of these around and some are supplied
(other types aren't supported for reasons of
quality and stability). There were a couple of
problems when using the text on a curve feature
- if the stretch to fit option was used it didn't
seem to actually do what it was supposed to, so
I found I had to choose the correct size font for
the curve beforehand. When fiddling around
with this, the machine did crash once, so I
wonder whether there may still be a bug in
there somewhere.

King ARexx

As an added bonus there is ARexx support
within the program and it is very useful. A set of
predefined scripts are included which allow you
to do things like add shadows or create big
explosion type objects. Obviously you can also
create your own scripts. These scripts are
useful, but I do wish that there had been some

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more of them. As LH Publishing are planning
new filters for the program, which will be made
freely available, perhaps more scripts will be
added as well.

There is so much to this program, that it's
almost impossible to know where to start, but
you can explore much of it in the demo. One
thing you don't get to see is the exporting of
pictures or objects as bitmaps or EPSs so bear
in mind you can do that as well as saving out
DrawStudio format projects. Remember that
there have been quite some changes made
since the demo, so there is a lot more to it than
you'll find in there.

The program requires an 020 and there is
an optimised version for those with an FPU.
Workbench 2,04 and Mill are required, but a
higher spec machine than the bare minimum is
best. The program also comes with some disks
of clipart to get you started. CD owners
obviously get even more. MUI does come

supplied with the package if you don't already
have it. There is an in-depth manual that guides
you through all the program's features, although
it is fairly intuitive.

This is a quality product with masses of
uses and I hope that people have the sense to
buy it, I'm glad we got to review it before the
end of Amiga Shopper, but I do worry that if it
doesn't sell as well as it should, then we may
see another developer leave the Amiga. There is
doubtless a decline in the Amiga market, but
products like this show why the machine still
has a future for its dedicated users, ■

DrawStudio

Floppy £59.95
CD-ROM £79.95
Supplier: LH Publi shing
Contact: 01908 370230

Verdict: 92% starb«y

Getting to grips cont...

5 ) The text will fit an the curve.
Now select the curve box and
delete it, leaving the text in the
shape. The text will be made up of
many objects now, so select the
whole lot and group them together.

S) The new object can now be
warped, as any other object can,
so select the warp and use the
"Envelope" feature to be able to
twist the text as you want.

7) With the text in place, you can
treat it as a normal object and
get on with the rest of the image.

8} Especially useful is the
merging of projects as other
projects can be imported at a
scaled size of your definition.

Is:-, ,• 71

Christmas 1996

Amiga shopper 21

ShopperRevlew

Web browser

Graeme Sandiford

AWeb-ll

The latest version of this
popular web browser hosts a
range of new features but how
well does it compare with it's
competitors?

The Internet may well be one of
the hottest hang-outs
nowadays, but this wasn't
always the case. The Internet
has been transformed from a
nerds' retreat Into an invaluable
information resource and one of the
fastest growing areas of entertainment.
This phenomenal increase in popularity is
undoubtedly due to the introduction of the
World Wide Web (WWW).

The WWW has transformed certain areas
of the Internet from boring and inaccessible
lines of text and unfriendly protocols, into
graphically appealing and intuitive combinations
of pictures, sounds and animations. This has
made the Internet one of the most important
areas of personal computing and the Amiga has
not been left behind in the head-long rush on to
the Information Super-highway.

While it can't be said that the Amiga has
been spoilt for choice, the dedication of most
users has ensured that it has been furnished
with all the tools it needs to exploit most areas
of the Internet. However, up until recently, the
Amiga has really only had one web-browser -
AMosaic. In the last few months though, the
Amiga has experienced a mini avalanche of
commercial browsers, and the latest to add its
weight to the influx of programs is the newest
version of AWeb.

As with I Browse the program has been
designed to work with a wide range of TCP
stacks. If you are new to this area of computing,
a TCP stack is a protocol (think of it as a
language) necessary for your computer to be
able to access the WWW. You will need to buy
or download one to use the program to its
fullest. The program will work with the popular
AmiTCP, Termite TCP, I-Net225. AS-225 and
other compatible stacks - although it has some
weird moments with Termite TCP However even
without a TCP stack you can still use it to view
local files.

^33

<v~A/ AWeb-112.0

If you need a helping hand using the program
than look no further than the on-line
documentation.

WSBS AWeb has no

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trouble dealing
with colourful and
imago-laden
web-pages as it
can use most
screenmodes.

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Tim ChwrM|inlyri Urlwiif
CominMk.ro User* Group

One of the things that has still managed to
fend off many a prospective Internet-user has
been the difficulty of setting up the necessary
programs. AWeb has opted for a standard
Installer-based installation that shouldn't be too
demanding for anyone with a fair understanding
of the Amiga and the way it works.

You will be asked a few questions to get
everything sorted out, but most aspects of the
program are automatically dealt with for you,
which is just as well as the modular design of
the program could easily allow inexperienced
users to miss out vital components or have them
installed to the wrong place.

As the program only comes on two floppies,
the whole installation process only takes a few
minutes and doesn't require a great deal of disk
space. The program's only requirements are OS
3, 2Mb of RAM (some Fast RAM helps a lot of
course). DataTypes - for viewing images (JPEG

and GIF DataTypes are a must) and some
classes from the Class Act kit which have been
included. Although the documentation that
accompanies the program has some fine tips on
using AWeb effectively on a 2Mb machine, the
program, like most others, will perform a lot
better with more RAM and a fast processor.

Once the program is installed, along with
the DataTypes and TCP stack, you're ready to
surf the WWW. Of course, as with most
aspects of computing, things are never as
straight-forward as might be expected on the
Internet. There are lots of different protocols and
even variations of protocols and HTML, the
formatting language of WWW documents, is no
exception. At the last count HTML was up to
version 3, although that's probably changed by
now. AWeb has full support for HTML- 2 and
partial support for most of the important features
found in HTML-3. This gives it pretty much the

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AWeb to anything you tike, so tang as you pface
the image in the right directory

January 1996

As AWeb enables you to toad other documents
as you make new tinks the Network status
window is very handy.

Issue 71

Graeme Sandiford

Web browser

ShopperReview

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same level of compatibility as several PC and
Mac browsers.

Given the rate of change, it's not surprising
that many HTML-authoring packages can
produce the occasional quirk on a page. This
can result in pages appearing quite "mashed-
up" and sometimes almost readable. It would
seem that AWeb's designers (AmiTriX
Developments) have encountered their fair share
of "unique" web-pages as they have built-in a
special feature to try and resolve this irritating
problem, called compatible mode.

If you are browsing the WWW and come
across a page that contains some bad HTML
codes - usually made evident by the page
appearing screwed-up - you can simply switch
to compatible mode. This mode will try and iron-
out the bugs in the page so that it is displayed
correctly. If you use this mode on a normal page
though, it will screw it up so be sure to switch
back to the normal mode.

Another niggling pain that frequent Internet-
users sometimes come across is User
Authorization. On certain sites you are required
to register with the site before you can view any
of the documents or files (like Future net). The
trouble is that you usually have to enter your
details every time you visit a site. AWeb can
take note of the sites which require authorization

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Although not fully implemented at the moment,
AWeb-2. 1 will have support for TetiVet, FTP
and Newsgroups.

Issue 71

Surf Squirrel

SCSI and Serial
for fhe Amiga 1 200

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,4 Web ftas full support for transparent GIFs so that certain images
appear cut out and the background shows through.

It's easy to get support form Amiga-developers on-line. You can
download software updates and e-mail queries.

"The simple no-
nonsense

interface typifies
the program..."

and will store your user ID and password so that
the next time you want to access a document or
another in the same area of the server you don't
have to type in your details again and again.

Because of its graphical nature, support for
different graphics formats is a particularly
important for a browser. Most Amiga browsers
either have support for different graphics built-in
or rely on DataTypes to provide the necessary
support. AWeb has support for transparent
GIFS, so that you don't get that ugly blocky look
when icons and images are overlayed on
background pictures.

The quality of the images that are displayed
obviously depends on the screenmode in which
they are being displayed. AWeb can be opened
on to any of your Workbench's supported
screen modes. So if you have a 24-bit graphics
card with Workbench emulation or CyberGfx
support and the correct DataType you can view
pages in 24-bit true colour, which is a good
thing as many of today's colourful web pages
look terrible in 256-colours.

However it can be a real pain sometimes
when visiting a very graphical page when you're
in a hurry as you have to wait for the images to
load in for the page to make any sense. Most
browsers have the ability to stop images from
loading in automatically, but the links contained
on many pages are graphic-based. AWeb can
be instructed to load only link images, which are
usually quite small, and thereby save you a great
deal of time without wrecking the page.

When you are online time is money and you
don't want to be hanging about unnecessarily.
To limit the time you spend twiddling your
thumbs as you wait for a page to load, AWeb

January 1996

makes use of extensive internal multitasking.
This enables asynchronous and parallel network
access. You can even follow a link from one
page to another as the first is still loading.

An important feature for any browser is
support for as many protocols as possible.
AWeb has internal support for the Gopher and
HTTP protocols and can use external programs
to access FTP, Mail, Telnet and News which
covers most types of sites on the Internet.
Although this is not yet fully implemented at the
moment, these features should be available in
version 2.1 which should be available as you
read this review.

Keeping track of your favourite sites is
another important feature. Most programs can
store a hotlist of sites, but AWeb can also group
entries so that similar sites come together. You
can also import hot lists from other browsers.

Most of the designers of browsers go to
great lengths to make their program's interface
appealing, bright and colourful. In contrast
AWeb's design seems to have taken a
minimalist approach. There are no spinning
logos or large fancy buttons. Most of the
functions are accessed from menus while the
nine most commonly used are available as small
icons at the top left of the screen. The rest of
the top of the screen is occupied by two text
gadgets - the top one holds the current page
address and the bottom one doubles up as a
display for the address of the link that the
pointer is over and as progress bar.

The simple no-nonsense interface typifies
the program as a whole. It may not look as
attractive as other browsers and it doesn't
have all the fancy features or extensive options
of a program like IBrowse, but it does have all
the tools it needs to do its job and it does that
job well. ■

AWeb-ll

Price: £39.95

Supplier: BhttersoH

Contact: 01908 261466

Verdict: 80%

ShopperReview

Interfaces

Simon Goodwin

Interface

terrace ■ -^ p-%

Expansion

Simon Goodwin tests serial and parallel port expanders for Zorro Amigas.

very Amiga has a versatile
serial and parallel port. They
can link to printers, modems,
scanners, MIDI instruments and

effects, samplers and networks.
It's clear that you don't have to expand
your Amiga far before you could do with
some more of these useful ports.

What if you need to use your printer and
parallel-port scanner at the same time? Perhaps
you own a graphics tablet or serial mouse, and
want to use it to control your modem. Switch
boxes are not much help. What you really need
is extra ports.

The obvious way to add ports is with Zorro
expansion cards. Options are the Multiface 3
from BSC of Germany, distributed by Golden
Image in the UK, and GVP's lOExtender, sold
here by Power Computing. The price and
facilities of these boards are similar, but they
differ in their workings and software support.

Connectors

Both boards are compatible with all Zorro 2
Amigas, from the old A1SO0 to the latest
A4000T. Each adds one parallel and two serial
ports, and you can fit several boards at once if
you need more.

On the back panel they offer a 25 pin
parallel socket and a nine pin serial port. A serial
connector squeezes into the remaining space on
the panel. Most modems and graphics tablets
are made to suit old and new PCs as well as
standard Amiga hardware. They come with both
nine and 25-pin leads, and plug straight in to
either expansion port.

Both cards include two distinct serial ports,
but there's only room for one serial socket at the
card edge. To use the second serial port you
much connect a flying lead to the Zorro card,
and find some way of presenting an extra
connector to the outside world.

The Multiface comes with a full-sized 25-pin
second serial socket on a metal card edge. The
second serial connector is not normally included
by GVP, but if you need one Power Computing
can supply a similar card-edge plate, with either
a nine or 25-pin socket, for an extra tenner.

These card edge plates occupy an
otherwise-unused Zorro slot. Alternatively you
could remove the metal plate and connect the
socket to an internal interface. I have a Power
Computing MIDI interface fitted inside my
MicroNik tower, so I connected the flying lead
from the second serial port to that, keeping my
Zorro expansion options open.

^^^^■^fl IB^HSI

The GVP

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board has the

edge as far as

the serial part

is concerned...

5Wtt\\\\'^

24 Amiga

I January 1996

The software allows you to set the preferences
for the serial port, adjusting the controls used.

Documentation

GVP's 10 Extender User's Guide is a bundle of
50 pages, tacked together by a single staple.
There is no pin-out information for any of the
connectors - an extraordinary omission. When I
mentined this to Power they replied 'it's
standard' - which is certainly not the case for
any Amiga,

The Multiface manual is a 200 page
paperback. The text is well written and
presented, covering both hardware and
software. Connectors and adapters are
explained. The only gaps are cursory discussion
of MIDI, and no mention of alternate operating
systems such as NetBSD, Qdos and Mac
emulation.

Serial hardware

The Multiface 3 is based on standard Motorola

interface chips. The serial ports run at a
maximum of 1 1 5200 baud, just about right for
today's fastest modems. This relies on the
system being able to respond to 'interrupt'
signals promptly, and that can be a problem with
some disk interfaces - notably the DKB 4091 ,
Warp Engine and old GVP models.

The Multiface does not support the MIDI
rate of 31 250 baud. Apparently you can fix this
by replacing the crystal on the board but this
requires soldering and you lose support for
standard serial rates above 9600 baud. I
swapped the crystal, but still could not get MIDI
to work.

GVP have included extra hardware to
generate the peculiar 31 250 baud MIDI signals,
but you still need software that can access
alternative serial ports. Most sequencers and
trackers only support the standard port.

Issue 71

Simon Goodwin

Interfaces

ShopperReview

The GVP board is bigger and more
complicated. The interfacing is handled by an
ST1 6552 chip, this can buffer up to sixteen
bytes before interrupting the Amiga, allowing
higher serial transfer rates on a busy machine.

The upper limit is 614400 baud. To achieve
this you may have to run the 'GVPpatch'
supplied to throttle back greedy SCSI devices.
Better boards like the GVP 060 and
Cyberstorm 2 work fine without patching.

Parallel ports

The GVP restricts parallel input as there's no
input interrupt and data line directions must all
be switched at once - you can't use some for
input and some for output.

These boards are not yet usable from
NetBSD, apparently for want of technical
information. GVP supply port addresses in a
readme file, and I found the ST16552 manual on
the Web, but that's the limits of GVP and Power
Computing's support for the IO Extender.

The GVP has a configuration jumper to
supply +5 volts on pin 14 of the parallel port.
This suits Amiga peripherals, but may upset PC
ones, which is why it's configurable.

"These boards are
well made, easy

to install and work
well for parallel
printing and serial
communications."

The general-purpose Muitiface chips are
hard to program without specific address and

pin assignment details. Like GVP, AB-Union did
not respond to technical enquiries, and their
BBS is entirely in German. It seems the only
way we'll get new drivers is if someone
disassembles the existing ones.

Software

Both cards come with quick, friendly installation
software. It adds files to your Workbench
directories as the boards do not include ROMs
The installer copies handlers, drivers and icons,
and a device driver in the Expansion directory.
There are three ways for software to address an

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Again, you have the choice of adjusting the
settings to get the best from the serial port.

...but the Muitiface has scanner software and
parallel networking options.

interface port. It can go directly to the hardware.
use a standard device name like serial. device or
SER:. or allow the device name to be
configured. Programs that hit the metal can only
work with the motherboard ports, unless re-
written. GVP's own Digital Sound Studio and
Power Computing's PowerScan fall into this
category.

The Muitiface has extra software for Epson
GT parallel port scanners, and networking
between Amigas. Networking is supported by
the standard PARnet, for the internal parallel
port, and a special version for the Muitiface
equivalent.

The 'PIAnet' driver is claimed to be
substantially faster than standard. It transferred
around 60K per second between two
A4000/060s with Muitiface 3s - useful but a bit
disappointing as the manual claimed 1 0OK per
second between 68030 machines. But it does
leave the standard port free for software that
requires it.

Programs that ask for devices by name
could be patched to use another name, and
thus re-directed to Zorro. You could edit the
code directly if feeling brave, or let the bundled
software intercept hardware requests and pass
them on to an alternative device.

BSC's MapDevice works from the Shell or
your startup. It can intercept and redirect serial
or parallel port requests. You can't easily use
two programs that ask for the same device
name at once, even though you've got two ports
that could respond to that name. GPIOControl
is the IO Extender's equivalent, accessed from a
preferences icon rather than shell commands.

For best results you need software
configurable to open the port with a new name

Issue 71

The GVP board comes with software patches to
enable the board to function.

January 1996

or unit number. ShapeShifter, communications
packages such as Term and NComm, and
Aminet's numerous serial mouse and tablet
drivers fall into this system -friendly category.
Once configured to use gvpser.device or
duart.device you can potentially run a dozen at
once, all on different ports.

Both boards come with configuration
software similar to Commodore's Serial
preferences, but with control over the unit (port)
numbers as well as speed, buffer size and data
format. BSC let you set the flow control
characters, and the time to signal a line break.

GVP let you select the MIDI rate and
custom baud rates, showing the nearest speed
it can manage. Anything within a few per cent
(half a bit period) should work fine.

Conclusion

These boards are well made, easy to install and

work well for parallel printing and Serial
communications. But they're no help with
programs that write directly to the Amiga
hardware.

The GVP IO Extender has the best serial
ports, the Muitiface 3 benefits from parallel
networking and Epson scanner software. Its
serial ports are slower, although still superior to
Commodore's.

Price-wise, there's little to chose between
them, once you've added the cost of the extra
connector needed to bring the GVP board up to
full specification. They work well with system-
friendly software, and their main weakness is
lack of support for obscure hardware and alien
software like NetBSD and ShapeShifter. Alas
this is unlikely to change unless the importers or
manufacturers sharpen up their act when it
comes to technical support. ■

BSC Muitiface 3

£79.95

Supplier: Golden Image
Contact: 0181 900 9291

Verdict: 74%

GVP lOExtender

Price: £69.95

(second serial connector £10)
Supplier: Po wer Computing
Contact: . I _ :

Verdict: 78%

Shop per Review

Art package

David Taylor

David Taylor finds out what's new in version 2 of the program from
Class X that can design flashy new fonts in seconds.

Class X have never been a
company to stand still. Last
month it was a new revision
of X-DVE and this month
we've got a whole new
version of Font Machine. Font Machine is
a program that can render colour Amiga
fonts quickly and easily. This format of
font is not one widely used by Amiga
owners, but it is ideal for graphics users.
Hence the fact that this format is
supported by three of the most important
programs in this area: X-DVE itself
(version 2.S+), Personal Paint and Art
Effect. Within Personal Paint there seems
to be a glitch with the palette though.
Since the last version of Font Machine,
Class X have taken a look at the interface and
decided to try and make it a little more
accessible. I have to say I hardly found it difficult
in the first place - one of the beauties of their
products has always been their ease of use.
Still, while the basic layout has remained the
same, there have been updates, including the
ability to quickly choose the colour for each of
the effects separately and have the colour check
kept up in the box next to the effect (or both
colours if the effect uses more than one). All you
need to do to select the colour for the effect is
choose it from the palette and then click in the
effect's colour box.

Most noticeable on the new interface of
course is the new Emboss effect. When I first
added it to the font with the direction set
straight up, I wasn't particularly impressed, but
when I switched to a diagonal the whole font
came alive. Needless to say, it quickly became
one of my favourites. It's not an easy effect to

The difference between the old and new
interface (version I above and version 2 below)
is considerable, if not eye catching.

■-'J--,!' '

The fonts can be used in the Art Effects package and look great on screen. Their bitmap nature can
betray quality though. Notice that the effect on the font has made the holes transparent - cool!

explain, because it does exactly what it says it
does. You really have to play with it for a while
and the effect on its own (as shown in the
diagram for reference purposes) doesn't do it
justice. When added to a font with a border and
texture, it really does look as if the font is
embossed - as if stamped on the screen and
slightly raised.

The Bevel, 3D and Shadow effects are still
here and add the effects you'd expect. As
before, textures can be a choice from bitmap
pictures, plasma or patterns (the latter two are
generated by the program according to user
input and a palette choice). There is a difference
in the way that textures are added to the fonts
though. There is now a random mapping choice
which will ensure the texture is moved around
behind the fonts so that the same parts aren't
visible behind the letters. It makes the font look
a lot more natural. Before, when a picture was
added as a texture, although it looked great, the
repetition did spoil the effect, especially when

January 1996

the picture was a texture like granite or wood.
This new feature makes it look much more as if
the font has been carved from a larger block, if
you'll follow the metaphor.

To help with the use of all of these new
features, which will involve much more colour on
a font, the preferences have been redone so
they are easier to use and you can easily adjust
the number of colours used. To make the most
of it though, there is a palette optimisation tool
to make sure that the borders, fonts and
textures make the best use of the colours. There
is also a remap tool which appears in the Font
section, but although ticked it appeared
constantly greyed out, so it didn't seem to
operate for some reason..

Another big addition is ARexx support. The
program comes with an ARexx script for a Shell
in which you can test the ARexx scripts. There
are not actually many scripts supplied and I
would like to have seen a few more, but a
couple of them show the use ARexx has and if

Issue 71

David Taylor

Art package

Shop per Review

Program features - take a look for yourself

Awiga!^ Willi Amiga! Amiga!

O Antialiasing helps to make the
fonts look smoother around the
edges by reducing the "/aggies" -
using pixels to fill in the edges.

O Several different mapping
options make the texture or fill
appear differently on We font face.

Miga

ontMachine by ClassX v2,8B »ate:29/18/1996

322-39-80284 7-B8 3b8<q

jzii

j±j ©

J«J

Jd ^ 1 - I

j=dl

AJO^feJ

J Hnt ia I las

JUL

Or i q ina 1

Select
Show

Save

Renap

Q-l Front

| Ql Brush |

Load

Save

Show f Palette

q, ■jii-.it-

Resolution! Get Font
Edit | Get Front |
Load 1 Get Border!

t'.x c h &r> <g *;__ j Fr ««

Save

J OP*

Load

Save

Pref s

? | Quit |

Q The font can simply be selected
from this part using a requester.
When you are ready to render the
whole font with effects, simply save
it out here and it will start the
process.

(Jy The textures can be bitmaps
loaded in, or plasma or patterns
generated by the program. Textures
can be added to the front of the font
or the border.

Qf There is a fair amount of palette
adjustment that can be made. You
can load in ones, grab them from
various parts of the font and edit
them manually.

(^ If you want to keep the font in a
format that you can adjust later, you
can save it as a project. This also
makes it easy for you to add the
same effects to different fonts.
There are prefs for the program and
information on the current project.

You can now only render subsets of the font to
save time from creating non-standard
characters that wont be used.

you are an ARexx guru then its a feature worth
having. The rest of us can certainly make use of
a couple of the scnpts. There's one which can
take Projects created in version 1 of Font
Machine and convert them to the newer version
2 project format to save you some work. There's
also one to show all the projects in the projects
drawer and two interactive scripts that act as
tutorials. These are excellent leading you through
the creation of fonts using all of the tools.

When actually creating the fonts using the
Save button that renders the fonts and then
saves them straight out, you can now select
subsets of the fonts. If you have a font with a lot
of processor intensive work - textures on the
front and border and other effects too, then it
may take quite a time to render the whole set,
which is a waste of your time and disk space -
a big font can take up over 1 Mb. If you know
that you aren't going to use the numbers or any
of the international characters or only want one

Issue 71

case, then you can deselect the others and
make it all quicker. Because of the nature and
use of these fonts, you will probably have a hard
drive, so space might not be a consideration but
even so a full character set, with lots of effects,
took about five minutes to render on a 030.
Simpler ones rendered a lot faster - only
seconds in some cases.

Speaking of speed, Class X have also
optimised the redraw of fonts in the interface, so
you can make adjustments and see the preview
a lot faster. They claim it is actually about five
times faster.

There is no doubt that Font Machine is a
brilliant program. It's ideal for video titlers and a
must for users of the X-DVE package. It uses
large fonts because of the nature of the program
(adding a texture to an 6-point would be a waste
of time) and even if you don't have any large
fonts, you needn't worry because it comes with
over 20. However, it's a niche program strictly
for graphics people and video buffs. Over in Italy
the Amiga is very popular for video titling on a
professional level, whereas its following here in
England is much more amateur to semi-
professional.

You'll be glad to hear that Font Machine 1
should be appearing on the AF Coverdisk soon,
with details of how you can get hold of the new
version at a special rate. It's certainly worth
plumping for 2, there's much more on offer. ■

January 1996

New features

) Emboss operator
) Palette Opti miser; fast and useful
) Full ARexx interface
) User interlace is better and more suited
for interlaced screens

> Automatic attributes remap on palette
changes

) Random Mapping made

) Palette customisation; build your own

colour spreads

) Ready- to- use pattern presets
) Automatic ColorFonts remap
) ColorFonts' palette optimisation
) Ability to save a subset of the font
) Close gadgets on font and texture

windows

> Enhancements in the GUI code

> Automatic font redraw now works with
AmigaOS2.ii

> Speed: font redraw is about 5 times
faster than vl.xx

) Antialiasing: faster and more accurate

Font Machi ne 2

Price: £46.99

TtnniHwi Futu re P ublishing

Contact: 01225 82251 1 (AMFFONT2)

Verdict: 90%

ShopperReview

CD-ROMs

Ben Vost

I l out

check

Ben Vost introduces three new discs for you this month.

i n imnnFTT

, fc . .. ;TT

...LUJ., ,1 U

■rafai* ■ i t ji n\mAM .1

•sbss

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rou 7/ find a fu/f version of TurboCatc 2, 1 on Aminet 14 ■
complete with an AmigaGuide document with pictures.

Aminet 14

You ALL know what an Aminet CD consists of,
so the main point of these Aminet reviews has
become whether to slag off or praise the freebie
content on the disc.

The latest Aminet CD - we're now up to
version 1 4 - contains a full version of TurboCalc
2.1 with an online manual with pictures (unusual
for an AmigaGuide document). You lucky punters
also get a demo version of the current release of
TurboCalc - 3.5.

Apart from that, this CD concentrates on a
selection of business software, although the size
of the biz directory is dwarfed, as usual, by the
mods and pix directories. There's also a
replacement for AmigaGuide on the disc called
PowerGuide which seems to offer a few more
options including a search facility other than the
standard Multiview.

"As usual, an
invaluable

resource.

Aminet 14

e £12.99

Supplier: Epic

Contact: 0500131 486 OK

Verdict: 90%

Light-ROM Gold

The Light-ROM series has always
been the best way to get your hands
on hundreds of 3D objects, scenes
and animations. But that doesn't
alter the fact that the CDs aren't
very well organised. Light-ROM
Gold is no exception. Combining the
best Lightwave models from the first
three Light-ROMs, you should only

I buy this volume if you either haven't
previously bought a Light-ROM, or
you just want all the Lightwave
models on the previous CDs
gathered in one place.

The disc is jam-packed
(649Mb), with a few repeats, but my
real gripe is that there has been no
effort made to make the files on the
CD more accessible to the Amiga user. Graphic
Detail, the producers of the CD, could have

A great collection if you can actually find
exactly what you are looking for,

ensured that "Show all files" and "View by name"
were switched on. They could also have used
proper instead of 8.3 filenames.

Unfortunately, although models are grouped
roughly, without searching through the index
files, there is little chance of finding the model
you want which makes this CD even more
frustrating.

All the same, as I said earlier, this is the only
player in the game, so if you want a
comprehensive collection of Lightwave models,
scenes and textures then this is the CD that you
have to get.

Light-ROM Gold

Price: £19.95 -

Supplier: Weird Science

Contact: 0116 234 1682

Verdict: 75%

January 1997

Science

Weird Science have joined the ever-growing
trend of producing CD's to help you onto the net.

InTo-The-Net/Out-Of-
The-Net

There is a swell of new CDs on the market at the
moment devoted to getting Amiga users on the
Internet and Weird Science's contribution is
designed to get even floppy-only owners surfing
in no time. For a CD designed for use on both
Amigas and Windows 95 machines, Weird
Science really illustrate the way it ought to be
done. Other than by searching through the
individual! files, there is no way that the average
Amiga johnny is going to know that this is a
multi-platform release (take note Graphic
Detail!).

You get two CDs. one devoted to getting
you onto the net with plenty of software, and
the second filled with web sites for some offline
browsing so that you can get to grips with the
Web without having to pay for the phone call
costs.

Weird Science have also collated
information from a variety of sources allowing
you to find out more about the Internet in general
and creating web pages of your own in particular
in AmigaGuide and HTML formats. So far. we
haven't seen the offerings from Epic (Get On the
Net), Active (NetConnect) or any others, but we
can say that for £19.95 you're getting a whole
lot of Internet. ■

InTo-The-Net/Out-Of-
The Net

Price: £19.95

SuppHw: Weird Science

Contact: 01 16 234 1682

Verdict: 85%

Issue 71

Shop per Classifieds

January 1997

Issue 71

SHOPPER

wishes A Happy New Year
lo all its readers

KEW =11

Software

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Design and simulate digital electronic
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• 0, I, X (unknown), and Z (float) levels

• Synthetic 7-segment display

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• Aftexx Shelf for interactive simulation
Comes with AmigaGuide' instructions.
Workbench 20 or greater required.

Please send enquiries or postal orders to:
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PHONE: 604 733 6972

Email: crtris iterne@piUum.winiiev>cofT

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hard disk & 2 IDL CD RUM to AMIGA 4000 internal IDE controller, through
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Software (does not use Zorro Slot) CS9.00

Hard Drives for

A4000 Aizoo

3.5" 540MB £t29.00

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TV 2.IGIG £239.00

Hard Drives for

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2.5"' 60MB £55.00

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120MB £159.00

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(for A500/500+)

IDE Quad Speed CD-ROM Drive*

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(requires AlfaPower v6,8 + Hard Drive) 1128.00

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Optical Mouse £29.95

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Amiga PSO for Asoo, Aooo (4 AlXOO £29.95

Apollo 1220 25MHz Accelerator

Cue your A 1 200 350*3! Performance Includes Clock & 25MH/ FPU
1220 Bare Humd £99.95

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Shopper Promotions

January 1997

Issue 71

Back issues

Don't despair if you missed an issue of your favourite
Amiga magazine. Just fill in the coupon below or call
our special order hotline on • 1 225 8225 1 1 .

Discover what CD-ROM technology can do for you - our
complete feature looks at new drives, the new Squirrel
MPEG hardware and the best CD-ROM software on the
market Plus a preview of DrawStudlo and reviews of

Pretium and the Epson 200.

Issue 69

Art Effect could well be
the most powerful
graphics package that
the Amiga has ever
seen. David Taylor
Introduces an extensive
six page review. Reviews
of DOpus 5.5, OctaMED
Sounds* udic and the
Cyberstorrn Mk II. Plus
the start of a brand new
tutorial designed to help
you create your very own
web pages. With ail the
regulars as well don't miss
outl

The Amiga Is just as capable as any other machine of
producing high quality DTP documents - Larry Hlckmott
has all the information you need to help you get the
most out of your Amiga.

Plus reviews of Termite TCP, I Browse and Datachrome
Gold. You can't afford to miss It!

Amiga Shopper Back Issues order form

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January 1997

Issue 71

Amiga Format

On sale NOW

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package comes
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We've got reviews of all the latest hardware and software,
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January 1996

Issue 71

■ ■. 77 ■. .; » •- . z 1 - . ? - * > \"* v. ">>V7>i; :.*> ■.?•»-. •.»<..,:■ »jj *v*c;

4 *7>v?l?**T**V7»v?**?* ■• "

Turn your excess equipment into cash, or find a true bargain. Any entries can be submitted to the mag
at the usual address - just remember to mark your envelopes "Reader Ads".

WANTED

• Video Studio titling programme

and G2 genlock wanted. Call ■»
01 420 544945 any time.

FOR SALE

• Amiga A1 200 accelerator
GVP1 230II 40MHz 030 082 FPU,
8Mb plus GVP1291 SCSI board.
All Manuals and disks, £250 ono.
Call it 01 206 85481 1 , e-mail
steve@bh01 .demon.co.uk.

• Microvitec 1438 monitor with
speakers, 1 4-inch multiscan,

£1 50; Amiga A1 200. 6Mb, 82Mb
hard drive, 33MHz FPU, clock,
extra FDD, Competition Pro
joystick, 300+ disks, £200 ono
(with accessories). Call o 01908
691439.

• External floppy drive, brand
new, still boxed, £25; also 1 Mb
memory for A600, never used,
£15, can buy separately or buy
both with A600 computer for
£100. Calif 01902 24718.

• GVP 68030 accelerator and
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ROM, extra drive, boxed and as
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• Amiga 1200, 4Mb, 80Mb HD,
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consider split, £360 ono. Call for
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• Amiga 1 200 850Mb HDD, 8Mb
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David Taylor

Q&A

Shopper Answers

Amiga Midi

I've had a ST for many years and am quite
happy with the use of sequencers. Midi, and so
on. Recently I've been able to pick up a second
hand 1 Mb Amiga A500 for my kids but though I
know that the Amiga can be used for Midi
sequencing I've noticed that there are no Midi
connectors. Have I got an old model and, if not,
what exactly do I need to do in order to use
Midi? Also what sequencing software is
available at the moment. Is there any serious

software, similar to Cubase, around? I've read a
little about packages called Bars & Pipes and
KCS m an old magazine advert but when I
telephoned the supplier I was told that these
products were no longer available.

Mr P. 1. Boyd
Corton
Norfolk

Unlike the Atari ST the Amiga does not have
separate Midi connectors on board but the

serial port can handle data transmission at Midi
speeds and this is what's used. In order to use
Midi you will however need to get yourself a
piece of hardware called a 'Midi Interface' to
provide the opto-isolation and the right type of
(DIN) connectors. These are simple devices
which plug straight into the Amiga 's serial port
and the good news is that they are cheap -
HiSoft's Pro Midi Interface for example, which I
use myself, costs just £24.95 (HiSoft can be
reached on to/; 07525 718181).

The experts at hand to help you...

Whenever you try out something different with your Amiga, or buy a new piece of kit, you
might come across problems that you don't know how to solve. That's what these pages
are here for - to guide you through your difficulties and get you using and enjoying your
machine to the full. We've got a great group of experts to hand with their own in-depth
knowledge in special Amiga areas. So put them to the test, and send your queries in.

Paul Overaa is our Operating
Systems programming expert. He
has written several books, including:
Mastering Amiga Assembler,
Mastering Amiga ARexx and
Mastering Amiga C. When he's not
drinking red wine or wind surfing, Paul can be
found making music and designing programs on
his Amiga.

John Kennedy is our hardware and
music expert. He has written
Supertests and features alike for
Amiga Shopper in the past He also
writes features and tutorials on a
range of subjects for our sister
magazine Amiga Format. This month in Amiga
Shopper John continues with his tutorial on
CanDo.

Gary White ley is our expert on
video and graphics. He regularly
produces work for films and TV.
Gary has also written several books
on his favourite subjects - among
them is Amiga Desktop Video,
published by Future Publishing (call « 01 225
82251 1 to order a copy). Gary also regularly
reviews new products for Amiga Shopper.

Larry Hickrnott is our DTP and

word processing expert. He
produces his own DTP magazine
called Em and has written several
books, including The Wordworth
Companion for Digita. This month

he reviews the latest printers on the market in

our extensive feature.

Issue 71

January 1996

Amiga answers 33

Shop per Answers

Q&A

David Taylor

Answers contents

If you're looking for a particular
problem, this handy index will help
you find the answers you need:

Midi on the Amiga

Meta Tags

Date Conversion
File Transfer

34
34

Disk problems

Software

Coding

Programming

Shell Windows

,4s far as sequencers go it's rather bad
news. Although the Amiga could have made
inroads into the serious Midi/music markets
fairly easily - it didn't. I won Y pull any punches
here... the fact that it didn't was due primarily to
a lack of the appropriate software. In short the
ST and the Amiga are worlds apart music-wise
and you're not going to find anywhere near the
sort of quality sequencing software that you
have available on the ST. Also this is almost
certainly not going to change so you can forget
about Cubase type sequencers and CLabs
type notation software ever appearing.

The Bars & Pipes sequencer has been
discontinued and it wouldn't have been any use
on your 1Mb machine anyway (you need at
least 2Mb to do anything at all). Dr T's KCS.
the sequencer which I personally favour and
use, is also (in theory) still available although
I've not been able to find anyone who stocks it.
Unfortunately this too requires 2Mb of memory
so you wouldn't be able to use it unless you
added some more RAM. If by chance, however,
you came across anyone willing to sell you an
old copy of version 1.6 of KCS then this would
run on your machine without needing extra
memory!

The bottom line is that you really only have
two choices: Software Technology's (let: 0161
236 2515) Sequencer One Plus , which is an
easy-to-use cheap (£49.95) entry level
package and Music X (version 2). Both of these
will be usable on a 1Mb machine.

Paul

Meta Tags

I've recently started learning about Web page
creation and have come across a couple of
references to 'Meta tags'. Unfortunately no
explanation was given as to what these actually
are. Are they Netscape extensions?

Julian Ward

Marblethorpe

Linconshire

Wo they're not Netscape related at all. Meta
tags are used to provide extra information, so
called 'meta information ', for a Web server.
There are various options but the 'name' and
'content' fields are probably the most commonly
seen since they are used for providing
keywords for cataloguing purposes. If, for
example, I had written this reply as an HTML
document then I might have included these two
meta tags in the document header...

ANSWERS

These would assign my name as the content of
a keyword called 'Author', and identify the
subject material as 'answers to questions'. This
information could not only be used by the site
server for identification purposes but search
robots from other sites, te programs that
automatically roam the Web looking for material
of interest, could extract and use the contents
of such tags.

Paul

Date Conversion

Is there a routine available that can convert the
time stamp details held in a disk file into a
readable, ie ASCII string, version? I've looked at
the Bantam Book's AmigaDOS manual from
cover to cover and can find nothing of use.

John Clarke

Weymouth

Dorset

There is a function called DateToStrO that'll do
the job but it's only been available since O/S
release 2.04 and so only appeared in the 3rd
editions of the RKM and AmigaDOS manuals.
The basic usage template is this...

success=Date ToStr(datetime)

dO d1

where register dl points to an initialised
DateTime structure. To set this up the
datJStamp field should hold the date stamp you
wish to convert and dat_Format the format
indicator (FORMAT _DOS. the value I've used
in the example, produces a dd-mmmm-yy type
date). The dat_Flag field has to be set to either
DTF_SUBST which causes Today, Monday.
Tuesday etc., to be used rather that the
designated format string or to Null.

The other three fields in the structure
(datJStrOay, dat_StrDate and dat_StrTime)
need to point to buffers which will receive the
day, date and time strings respectively. The
example fragment, where a date only is being
converted, should give you the general idea!

Paul

File Transfer from
Obsolete Machine

The firm I work for has recently had a
clear out and, amongst other things,
I've been given an old computer with
two 5.25" disk drives that I'm told
uses an operating system called
CP/M, Somebody mentioned that a
lot of the disks used with this machine
contain archive material (apparently
stored as ordinary text files) which
would be of use to our company and,
prior to me being given them, we did
in fact ask a local computer company
for their help. Unfortunately an
estimate, of almost £800 (around ten
pounds per disk) for transferring the
material onto 3 1/2" PC disks meant
that such a conversion operation was
out of the question.

January 1996

Now that the machine is at home of course
I've only got that, and my Amiga, to experiment
with but a colleague of mine is certain that there
must be a way of either linking a 5 1/4" drive to
the Amiga or linking the machines via their
parallel or serial ports.

Unfortunately, whilst this chap is pretty
clued up on computers in general, he doesn't
know anything about the Amiga. Does this
conversion route sound feasible and, if so,
would anyone at Amiga Shopper know how it is
done? We do incidentally have access to both
HiSoft and Blitz Basic for the Amiga but no
languages at all for the CP/M machine,

Peter Jackson
Orsett
Essex

Chances are that the easiest solution is going
to be linking the two machines via their serial
ports and, if you stick to a low transfer speed
(namely 300 baud), it should be possible to
move files over to your Amiga using what is
known as a 'three wire' connection.

Unfortunately older machines are notorious
for having 'non standard' port connections and
so it's going to be necessary for you (or one of
your colleagues) to hunt through any machine
manuals you have for some serial port
information. You 'II need details of the serial
port's system-ground, transmit-data and
receive-data pins in order to make up
suitable serial lead. I can tell you however that
it is pins 7, 2, and 3 that you'll need on the
Amiga side!

Now there are no dangerous currents
involved but wrong connection can easily
damage the I/O chips so it you are in any
doubt at alt you MUST get help from someone
who is used to playing around with electronics.

Assuming however that you do get a
suitable lead prepared, and have someone
around who is happy experimenting with such
serial port transfer, you'll be able to transfer
files from the CP/M end using a utility called
PIP (which you'll find on your CP/M system
disks).

Reading serial data into the Amiga is quite
easy. The following Hi Soft Basic program, for
example, will read data from the serial device
and place it in the ram disk as a file called
"my file'...

Listing 1

TEXT date[1 2]; struct DateTime

dt;dt.dat Stamp=date stamp;
dt.dat Format=FORMAT DOS;
dt.dat_Flags=NULL;
dt.dat StrDay=NULL;
dt.dat StrDate=date;
dt.dat_StrTime=NULL;

DateToStr(Adt); printf("%s\n", date);

• Listing 1 : Code fragment showing a typical use of
the DOS library's DateToStrO function (see 'Date

Function' letter).

Issue 71

David Taylor

Q&A

Shopper Answers

OPEN "RAM-.myfile" FOR OUTPUT AS #1
OPEN "COM1:300,n,8,rAS #2
X$—"D" 'just a dummy value to get into

loop

WHILE (ASC(X$)094) I example 'end of

file' terminator I

X$=tNPUT$(1,#2):PR!NTX$;:PRINT# U&
WEND
CLOSE 1: CLOSE 2

This sort of scheme could be used to collect
serial data from most older machines and the
only thing you need to be careful about is the
end-of-file terminator, ie the character which
signifies the end of the file, because this varies
from system to system although on CPIM
machines it is always control-Z. To transfer a
file in this fashion you'd link the two machines
with the serial lead, load up HiSoft Basic and
run the above program! Nothing visible will
happen because the program just sits there
waiting to collect serial data which, when the
program first starts, is not being sent.

The next step is to move across to your
CPIM machine. In terms of detailed help
there 's a minor snag here since I no longer
have any CP/M documentation available. Being
a CP/M machine however it will have devices
like LST implemented and you'll need to check
that this device is logically tied to the machine's
serial port (which, incidentally, must also be set
to 300 baud). STAT is the CP/M system
program that wilt let you carry out these type of
assignments and this should be documented in
the CP/M sections of your old computer's
manual). Once the output device has been
chosen you'll need to load up the PIP utility
and issue a suitable PIP command. Again it 's
the CP/M manual sections that wilt contain the
detailed options but the basic scenario will look
like this...

First you'll run PIP and be greeted with an
asterisk prompt...

A>PIP

then you'll type something like...

LS T;=B :exampte
which would copy the drive B: file 'example' to
CP/M's LST device (which in turn will be
redirecting the data to the old machine's serial
port). It's at this time that you should see
visible evidence of file transfer appear on the
Amiga's screen! Before all this you can
incidentally check the serial link by hitting
control-P (CP/M's echo to printer command).
From that point on, everything you type at the
old machine's keyboard should appear on the
Amiga screen. With the simple lead I've
suggested if the serial ports are properly
configured, but you don 't seem to be reading
anything, then about the only thing that could
be wrong would be that the lead connections
on pins 2 and 3 (the data transmit/receive
lines) were the wrong way round. The solution
here would be to swap the two wires around at
one end of the lead and try again.

You often get a few snags but with this type
of 'comms hack' magic but a bit of
experimentation usually saves the day. CPIM
should for instance, provide an end-of-file
marker but if things appear to 'hang' at the end

Issue 71

of the transfer the keyboard sequence controt-
P... control-Z... control-P (which will echo a
CP/M end-of-file character to the Amiga) may
well encourage the HiSoft Basic program to
give its OK prompt. If all else fails stop the
Basic program and type CLOSE to finish the
Amiga side of the transler. If you do this all
your file contents at the Amiga end will then
be safe!

Paul

Floppy failure

I can load from my A1 200"s floppy disk drive,
however when I set the write enable tab and try
to write to the disk from the hard drive, a system
request comes up saying "Empty has a write
error on disk block 880" Then the disk becomes
dfO: NDOS.

T Makepeace
Gosforth

Does this happen to all the floppy disks you
use, or only one particularly disk? It it's only the
one disk, chuck it away. It's knackered. Copy alt
you can off it and then bin it so you aren 't
tempted to try again. Floppy disks are cheap
enough to avoid the risk of losing data on them.

If this happens to all the floppy disks you
try, then either your floppy disk drive is broken
or the head is out of alignment and needs
adjusting by a repair shop or replaced. ItAs also
possible that a virus could be a work, so
perform the usual tests.

John

Object Apology

I have a CD-ROM called "LightRom" which
contains lots of models and objects, including
some in Imagine format. However, when I load
them into Imagine and try to render them I get
error messages about points using multiple
faces or something, and even though I keep
hitting OK the errors won't go away. It's odd,
because the objects load fine and are displayed
in the editor. It's only when I try to render them
the errors start. Any ideas?

Brian Clayton
Manchester

The objects must have been saved in an early
version of Imagine or by some program which
claims to be Imagine compatible. I've come
across the same problem myself, and there isn't
a lot you can do. Imagine has a "Check Object"
menu option, but this will only confirm that the
object is safe.

Sometimes if you select MERGE this will
solve the problem, although this drastically
reduces the control you have over the individual
facets. If possible, try and locate a program
called "Pixel 3D" or "OBI Junior". These two
pages were able to load objects in a wide
range of formats, allow some editing, and then
re-save them. In the process they can fix any
errors in the object.

I've had success with Pixel 3D and Imagine
objects using this technique. Finding these
packages might be difficult, but I don 't think
there is anything on Aminet which will do the
same job.

John

January 1996

Copper List Poking

I've picked up an old A500 machine and am
now trying to come to terms with C and
assembly language programming on the Amiga
(it's OK I'm not nuts - I've done plenty of coding
on other machines). Trouble is I've come across
some old PD disks that deal with scrolling using
'copper list poking' from assembler. I'd like to try
a similar thing using C (if it's possible) but the
difficulty is that I don't know enough about
Amiga 680x0 coding to fully appreciate the
explanations. I understand the scroll operations
themselves but I'm having trouble locating the
bitplane pointers used by the screen. I've
enclosed the listing from the disk and, providing
it makes sense, I'd be very grateful if someone
could explain how I identify the bitplanes
being used.

Peter Scobie

Dartford

Kent

The code you provided looks pretty awful at
first, but it's fairly well commented so it has not
been too difficult to fathom out what's going on.
The program starts by opening an oversized (in
fact double sized) custom screen and getting
the address of the View structure which
contains pointers to the system copper lists, ie
the instruction lists used by the Amiga s display
hardware. It then uses a short loop to locate
the bitplane pointers that get jammed into the
hardware registers. As the program runs it
continually replaces these original pointers with
increasingly modified values causing the
displayed screen area to change each time the
copper lists are re-read (which is during every
vertical blanking interval).

This type of scrolling can certainly be done
from C although the results will probably not be
as smooth as with an assembly language
routine. The initial part of the trick, and the area
that you are having trouble with, involves
finding out which the copper instructions to
change. Luckily, because of the way the lists
are created, all the bitplane pointer instructions
are next to each other and in short you need to
look for a series instructions the first of which
takes this form...

move register data-value

OOeO some 1 6 bit data value

instruction
to be found

first of the values
to be 'modified '

These copper instructions consist of two 16 bit
words, and the type of loop needed to skip
through the list (given an appropriate View
pointer) and locate that first OxOOeO instruction
is this...

view_p=(struct View ')ViewAddressO;

copperlist_p=g _vie w_p ->LOFCprL ist->s tart;

while (Ccopperlist_p) r=Ox00e 0)
{copperlis t_p+=2;}

copperlist_p++; /' move to second word of
the instruction '/

Presumably you are already aware that
each 32 bit bitplane address is split into two
halves (a three bitplane screen for example has
six plane pointer instructions) so, having got

ANSWERS 35

ShopperAn

Q&A

David Taylor

that starting point, bitplane adjustment is just a
matter of skipping through list making address
increment or decrement changes. If,
incidentally, you are going to do much coding
at this level I would recommend you get hold of
the Addison Wesley Amiga Hardware
Reference Manual. It's rather out-of-date as far
as the latest Amigas go but it'll be idea for
A5O0 hardware programming!

Paul

Sysex Programming

I've got a Midi sound module which the manual
says can be sysex controlled using the
hexadecimal programming language
Unfortunately no description of the language
statements are given. Can you help?

Mr George Lopaz

Greenwich

London

Hexadecimal isn't a programming language, it's
a base 1 6 numbering system which involves
use of the numbers 0-9 plus the letters A-F.
Trying to briefly explain what all this 'different
base' stuff means is not easy but, in a sense,
you probably use different number bases
without realising it. And if you stilt weigh things
in pounds and ounces you are actually using
something that comes very close to
'hexadecimal numbering' anyway - it's only the
notation that's different.

With our normal 'base 10' numbering
system, we group by units of ten. When you
add numbers together you add the units first,
then remove multiples of ten and 'carry' these
over to a '(ens' column. You do a similar
operation with the 'tens' column and so on. The
only reason that 10 is used for our numbering
system is that we found it convenient - we are,
after all, born with ten fingers to count with!

So, when you add pounds and ounces you
proceed as follows: You add the ounces and if
they come to more than 16 you 'carry' the
multiples of 16 into the 'pounds' column...
2 lbs 14 ounces

2 lbs 4 ounces

5 lbs

b lbs 2 ounces

(14 + 4 = 18: One group of 16 to carry

ounces left over)

and 2

If instead of using numbers from to 15 for our
ounces column then we used 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E and F - then we could
write 2 pounds 14 ounces as 2E ounces. It's
exactly this type of extended numbering system
that forms the basis of the hexadecimal
notation.

To be honest it's not just hexadecimal
numbers that you are going to need to learn
about. Many Midi manuals also use binary
(base 2) numbers to describe what the various
parts of a particular hex value means on their
equipment and in reality the hex representation
is just a convenient way of representing the
underlying binary values anyway.

The best idea is to get down to your local
library and took at a few introductory books that
deal with general computer programming. Not
all will deal with these number-related issues
but you'll doubtless find a few that will explain

36 Amiga answers

things in detail. Don't worry
incidentally if it seems a little
difficult at first - everyone finds
these sort of number conversions
awkward initially but rest assured,
with a little practice it does
becomes easy. Once you have
some hex/binary practice under
your belt chances are your Midi
manuals will then start to make
more sense anyway.

Listing 2

Paul

Storm C++
Coding

With the release of Storm C I

decided to start reading a book on

C++ to see what's involved

(Developing C++ Software by

Russel Winder). Unfortunately I'm

getting lost at the first hurdle with

talk about ADT versus true object-oriented

coding. What's the difference and can Storm

C++ be used either way?

Tony Bickerstaff
Essex

An Abstract Data Type (ADT) is basically an
interface, ie a set of functions, that provide a
standardised link to the operations you are
trying to perform. If, for example, you were
creating an ADT interface for a text file reader
you would firstly identify the things that you
might wish to do - open a file, close a file, read
the first line of text, read next line and so on.
Having done that you'd implement a set ol
functions OpenTextFileO,
Close TextFile (), ReadFirs tLine (),
ReadNextLineO etc., and these routines would
become the interface functions of your text
reader ADT.

Both C and C++ can be used in this sort
of way to create ADT style interfaces but C++
enables things to be taken quite a lot further
because you can hide these functions from
general view. As you'll probably already know
C++ allows classes to be created that can
have member functions associated with them
so you could, for example, implement a 'textfile'
class that incorporated those ADT routines
mentioned earlier.

In this sense instances of your textfile class
then become 'objects' that have certain
properties and methods of their own and this is
really the basis of the object-oriented form of
C++ coding. You can similarly define classes
for windows, gadgets and anything else that
your program requires.

I've not seen the book you mention but all
it's doing is describing two different styles of
C++ coding and Storm C could of course be
used with either style.

Paul

Amiga Basic

My question couldn't be shorter - does anyone
know where I can buy a copy of an Amiga Basic
manual?

R. Sandy
Dyce (nr Aberdeen)

Scotland

January 1996

/* F1 function key script definition */

CLEAR="0C'x

directoryS^MYDIR'

w indow='con:0/400/640/1 00/ F1/ close'

file$= , ram:T/F1'

address command

call Open(f,file$,'w')

call Writeln(f,'echo nollne' CLEAR)

call Writeln(f,'cd' di rectory $)

call WritelnCf.'prompt 1:>">

call Close(f)

run news he 1 1 window file$

delete file$

exit

The script for a Shell window function key -
Shell Windows At The Touch Of A Key!

This isn't the first time that tveVe been asked
about this lately but sorry you're out of luck -
the manual has not been available for many
years and can 't be bought for love nor money.
The only thing I can suggest is that you place
an advert in one of the mags that specialise in
the sale of second-hand computers etc. You
might just get lucky!

Paul

Port Control

I want to learn about the control of external
equipment using the Amiga's parallel port and
someone told me that there used to be special
Amiga kits available. Do you know of any likely
sources?

Albert Pitt
via email

/ vaguely remember that a company called
SwitchSoft made just such a kit a few years
ago. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be
advertising anywhere ol late so I've not been
able to able to come up with a telephone
number for you.

Paul

By the way SwitchSoft - if you're still out there
in Amiga land - drop us a line with some
current details and we'll pass them on!

Shell Windows At The
Touch Of A Key

How can I create a function key definition that
will open a shell window with a named directory
as the current directory. I've tned several
possibilities but none have worked!

Jennifer Rojiani

St Helier

Jersey

To 6e honesf it is a little more awkward than
most people would expect but the ARexx script
shown in the accompanying listing will do the
job when tied to a function key. Just change the
MYDIR reference to the appropriate
device/filepath name of the directory you wish
to use.

PaulH

Issue 71

Steve Liddle

PD Select

ShopperPublic Domain

•SsUiiH

Steve Liddle looks at his final collection of programs from the Public Domain including a new
children's art package and a utility that allows you to turn Workbench into a Windows95 look'alike!

PDChoice

Blue Rose Graphics

How b-o-r-i-n-g I thought, when
confronted with three PD disks
containing fonts, music and graphics.
Disk one boots up and gives you a
preview of what is on the other disks
but this is where my boredom turned to interest
and then admiration. As you can see from the
screenshots the clipart is all in colour and very
professional. It's been drawn by Mr. Blue Rose
himself, Eddie Barry, and he's done a great job.

I just wish there was more clipart on these
disks instead of the music mods and cut and
paste fonts. There is a mixture because the
contents are aimed mainly at Video work but all
the material comes in standard formats so it can
be used in any way you see fit. Really excellent if
you need it.

The three disks can be picked up for just
£4, including postage, direct from Eddie at:
1 4 Tudor Brea, Donaghcloney,
Craig avon,
Co.Armagh BT66 7LF

Verdict: 90%

Star buy

Some excellent colour clipart can be found on
The Blue Hose Graphics set.

at^rttitdix

i*ixn9e?s»©

RBCDEFE

HidKLnn

DPDR5TU
VUXSIZ?!

123HSE7

KLMMBPKJR5T
yUUtifZ""

HugeBase V2.1a

This database program used to be Shareware
but now it's Freeware which means you get the
full version for the price of a PD disk. Usually
when this happens it means the author has
given up on the program but not so in this case.
The author is still actively supporting the
program and promises a new version by
Christmas 96.

On the face of it, HugeBase is yet another
Amos written ugly monster but it is very
powerful and appears to be bug free, which is a
nice change. There's a huge well written and
informative manual on disk which is always a
good start, and Hugebase has stacks of
features. I couldn't find any important feature
that it didn't support, apart from the limit to

There are cut and paste fonts as well as proper
colour fonts that you can use in Dpaint etc.

l*,tT'*'<
« M

I I

— | | | | | | 1

I I I - i I I

This is just a small fraction of the options that
are available in HugeBase.

Who, what, where, when, why,

how.,.

Product
Art Effex

No. of disks
1

Type of product
Childrens Art

Price

£3.99

Supplier Contact
Arrow- Dynamic 01 304-832344

Verdict

80%

Page

Blue Rose

Fonts/el ipart

£4.00

Eddie Barry See review

90%

HugeBase

Database

£1.25

Snappy PD 01375-850365

86%

SFMV

Anim converter

1.25

Snappy PD 01375-850365

78%

Abk Viewer

166K

Amos file viewer

N/A

Aminet/dev/amos/abk view.lha

80%

StartMenu V2

308K

Win95 Taskbar

N/A

Aminet/util/wb/startmenu2.lha

91%

MacWb

79K

Mac hack

N/A

Aminet/util/boot/macwb.lha

78%

Allocator

22K

Memory manager

N/A

Aminet/util/misc/allocator.lha

88%

Birthday Warner

17K

Birthday reminder

N/A

Aminet/util/time/birthdaywarner.lha

75%

Cleanup

Disk cleaner

N/A

Aminet/disk/misc/cleanupV1 O.lha

78%

Issue 71 i

January 1996

ShopperPublic Domain

PD Select

Steve Liddle

records which is 60,000, Although this should
be fine for most users it is surprising that the
maximum amount of records is not determined
by the amount of free RAM you have available,
which seems to be usual nowadays. Apart from
that and the awful looking records screen this is
a fully featured database that deserves more
than a cursory glance.

Verdict: 86%

Huge&ase offers enough prefs to keep everyone
happy.

SFMV

SFMV stands for 'Shoah Full Motion Video' and
this disk of utilities converts standard IFF anims
into the new format and then plays them. SFMV
is designed to play back full screen animations.
using larger than normal pixels to create the full
screen effect for you. The animations run slowly
on a standard A1 200 and so an 030 or at least
an 020 with fast RAM is required to run the
anims at an acceptable rate. In fact, SFMV
requires an AG A Amiga to run.

The program is still in its early stages and
the authors plan to implement better
compression methods, increase the number of
colours (currently only 1 6) and the screen size.
As it stands SFMV is OK but there isn't that
much to get excited about - yet.

Verdict: 78%

AminetChoice

AbkViewer

This is a very simple program that will display
Amosfiles, without the need to own Amos itself.
So if you come across some 'abk' files just load

This is what we
call in the trade, a
very basic menu.

this up and use the file selector to view either
abk pictures, bobs, sprites or icons. When
viewing a bank file, such as a bob bank, you are
asked to enter the bob number. This is because

When viewing
bob A icon
banks there's no
indication of
how many
images there
are. You can't go
back and forth -
one look and
you have to
reload the bank-

there are usually many images in a bank. You
then get a small button selector to whiz through
all the images that are stored in the bank. The
interface is basic and unappealing, but it serves
its purpose. Also included in the archive are a
selection of example abk pictures, bobs, icons
and sprites.

Verdict: 80%

TCPdl

TCPdl is a cli only program that allows you to
download web pages, graphics and archives
from the Internet. It has options that can turn it
into a Web robot or you can use it to get a
regular update of a specific page, program or
even a whole web site. The command line offers
quite a few options including wildcard support.
TCPdl (Tcp download) requires a modem,
Internet connection and AmiTCP to operate. I
tried out this program on my 6Mb A1 200 over a
weekend and in that time it crashed at least 1 5
times, quite often causing read/write errors on
my hard drive. I contacted the author to see if he
knew what the problem was and he told me that
the source code was included with the archive
and it was up to me to sort it out.

When it did work it was great. Files were
downloaded really fast and I was most
impressed. There is a depth' option which
allows you to tell TCPdl how deep you want it to
dig from your starting point, but I had problems
grabbing the entire contents of one complete
site, which was my main aim. I dreamed about
downloading my favourite sites to my hard drive
and grabbing any updated documents/files
automatically once a week, saving me a fortune
in online time. But alas I gave up after all the
crashing. I really hope someone who knows
what they are doing picks up the source code
and develops this program as it has excellent
potential, but in its current unstable state (as far
as my Amiga is concerned) it is near useless.

Verdict: 29%

StartMenu V2.0

I am sure most of you by now have
seen the 'start menu' on Windows
95? For those of you that haven't
take a look at the screen shot.
StartMenu V2.0 attempts to emulate
the Win95 taskbar on yourAmiga and it does a
good job of it too. Virtually every feature of the
menus are configurable, even down to changing
the picture on the side of the bar.

StartMenu goes in your WBStartup drawer
and runs when you boot up your Workbench,

January 1996

The menu sits quietly at the bottom of your
Amiga screen waiting for you to click on the
'start' button. (You can even change the text on
this button if you want.) If we forget about
Windows 95 and look at this program on its
own merits it's a jolly good menu system. To add
programs to the menus and sub-menus you just
click on 'start' then on 'edit menu' and an MUl
configuration requester pops up. Using this you
tack in your favourite programs using a file
selector, shuffle them in the order you want
them and then click on save All your favourites
are now just two mouse clicks away. At the
other end of the task bar is a digital clock, click

Start menu has a lot of good features hidden
under the bonne tt. One of them is its MUl
preferences requester.
on this for the date as well. There are in fact
three versions available in this archive. I have
just described the full version but there is also a
'lite' and 'very lite' version. They have fewer
features with no horizontal bar and clock, which
some people may prefer. To round it all off there
is a very easy to use installer script and good
AmigaGuide documentation, Nice one.

Verdict: 91%

Star buy

MacWb

This hack was born of a previous program called
'Workbench 95' that was a not too serious
attempt at giving Workbench a Windows 95
look. The author admits that WB 95 was not
that stable, and he has bounced back with
MacWB.

MacWB is a not too serious attempt at
giving Workbench a slight System 7 look. It is
extremely easy to get the hack in place - all you
need to do is copy the supplied font to your
Fonts drawer and the main executable to your
'C drawer. You can then run Macwb from the
shell or create an entry for it in your user-startup
or even place the executable in your Wbstartup
drawer. MacWB doesn't do much, except to
change the appearance of your windows and
requesters to what looks to me like an Atari ST.
I think Amiga developers (and users) are
developing an inferiority complex. Workbench
might be out of touch but it can look as good as
you want it to if you have enough memory and
speed. All these hacks and partial emulators just
help to convince Amiga users they are missing
out on something. I just hope that once the
majority of Amiga users do eventually end up
with Mac's and PC's that the ex-Amiga coders
write some little hacks for Windows 95 and

Issue 71

Steve Liddle

PD Select

ShopperPublic Domain

A mix of Mac
windows and
the Win 95
Start menu.
Er, can I have
my old Workbench
3 back please?

System 7 that emulate the best parts of
Workbench 3. There is an archive on Aminet in
util/wb called 'macpointers' if you want a Mac
style mouse pointer to go with MacWb.

Verdict: 78%

Allocator

This is a small but possibly useful memory
manager. On running it from Workbench
(requires OSS) a small window opens and
displays the currently available chip and fast
memory that Is free. Bear in mind that Allocator
takes up around 63k of memory.

A cycle gadget allows you to toggle to
'used', 'max" or the default 'avail", 'used' tells you
how much memory is currently being used on
your system and 'max' tells you the maximum
memory you have available before booting.
Clicking on 'update' updates Allocator's data -
useful if you run Allocator and then another
program.

'Free' will attempt to flush memory of
unused programs and libraries which can be
useful and maybe even save you the odd reboot
after running dodgy programs that do not free
memory on exit. "Allocate' is the most interesting
feature (hence the title). This will be of great use
to programmers because it allows you to
allocate any amount of memory from the
available pool. If you are not sure whether a new
program will run in 1 Mb of chip mem. then just
allocate 1 Mb of chip RAM and try to run the
program. The final feature of Allocator is 'largest'

-IX=J.^r ■

in WW* ;

Allocator in various states of undress.

which tells you the largest slice of currently free

memory available to programs.

Verdict: 88%

BirthdayWarner

A very simple cli only utility that reads a script
file containing the birthdays of those people
most important to you. I think the idea is to put
this in your 'user-startup' script so that
whenever you boot up you will be reminded in a
countdown style that Uncle Fred's birthday is
only five days away.

Your script file, containing all the names and
birth dates, must be set out in a strict format.
This is quite straightforward and readily
explained in the documentation. Strangely
though you are not allowed spaces in your
script file, in other words you won't get the

above example message because 'Uncle Fred'
has a space but this is just a small nag. The
source code is included and Birthday Warner
is Freeware.

Verdict: 75%

Cleanup

It's keep it simple month, in case you hadn't
already noticed, and CleanUp is Mr Simple
himself. This tiny fellow's job iri life is to remove
empty files and drawers from your hard drive.

It's a Shell only program and all it requires is
the name of the drive to work on. You also have
the optional luxuries of telling CleanUp to ignore
empty drawers, report back on what it is doing
to your drive and whether or not to ignore files
or drawers with the protected flag set.

For DOpus users who do not know how to
set up a button for a shell command full
instructions are given. CleanUp works! What
more can I say?

Verdict: 78%

LicencewareCKoice

Art Effex

This is the first program from a new
Licenceware scheme run by Arrow PD. The
scheme is called Arrow-Dynamic and Art Effex is
a childrens art program. It includes all the usual
features you would expect in such a package
including: pen sizes, fill, cut and paste, circle,
square, eraser, line, spray can, zoom, screen fx
and a few cli part stamps.

That's all you get but I think the aim of the
package is to keep things simple, which I am

Issue 71

This picture contains all the built in stamps of Art Effex.

January 1996

ShopperPublic Domain

PD Select

Sieve Liddle

These option bars display most of the options that are available to users of Art Effex.

sure most parents will welcome. This is one of
those programs you can leave a child on their
own to play with. I am sorry to report though
that there are some dubious work-arounds
implemented in Art Effex that stick out like a
sore thumb. One is the omission: of an 'Undo'
feature and this will certainly prove very
frustrating for the older children. Imagine a child
spending an hour drawing a work of art only to
make a mistake and not be able to undo it!

The author (Asa Margetts) has included the
use of a 'clipboard' which basically means

saving your picture to memory and being able to
recall it at any time which sounds like a good
compromise, but in practice for this to work like
a real undo feature you would have to save your
work every time you drew a new piece of your
picture. To me this is a serious and huge flaw
that should be dealt with.

There are more dodgy non-features too.
Take the omission of a printing feature, ouch!
OK, this is not the end of the world because Art
Effex allows you to save out your picture as a
standard IFF picture file which means you can.

This colourful yellow plane is one of the seven pre-coloured pictures supplied with Art Effex.

January 1996

There are also some pictures to colour in too.

load it into a real paint package and then print it.
But Art Effex is written in Amos Pro, a program
that has some excellent, easy to implement,
graphic printing commands so there is little
excuse for the omission,

There are also too few clipart stamps in the
program. My child got really bored with the 1 9
on offer and some of the graphics themselves
are quite poorly drawn. My final complaint is that
there is no installer for hard drive users. There's
not even a simple script file that you can double
click on. To be fair, the instructions tell you what
files are required and where they go, but we are
talking educational software here and this sort of
thing is unacceptable in my book. Oh yes, I have
just come across a minor bug too. The first time
you select 'spray can' it won't work until you
pick a brush. Now I've got the bad points out of
the way we can look at the good side of Art
Effex. I hope I haven't put you off yet because
this program, despite its flaws, does has
something to offer. Its main attraction is its ease
of use. Most kids will pick it up and start
painting with it right away.

As the child moves the mouse pointer over
an icon, text is displayed to alert them what
action that button performs. This is very useful, if
the child can read, if not you can use the Amiga
say option, which is synthesised speech and
works quite well. The screen effects draw very
quickly, which is unusual for an Amos program
and the implementation of cut and paste works
extremely well and is simple to use. There is also
some pre-drawn clipart supplied that you can
load in as well as some pictures in colour.

For the asking price Art Effex (£3.99)
represents reasonable value. What prospective
purchasers need to decide is whether the flaws
mentioned above are important to them or not.
For example, the non-ability to print is not
important if you do not own a printer or have
no wish to print out your pictures. If you can
install programs by hand on your hard drive, or
do not own a hard drive then the lack of an
installer will not bother you. If the clipboard
feature instead of undo sounds is OK go out
and buy Art Effex.

This is not going to be Dynamics' flagship
title but it will win its admirers. My four year old
had some fun - he loved the sound effects, but
was left wanting after an hour or so. ■

Verdict: 80%

Issue 71

T(Bdhin(Dll<Diy

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BMb E 49

16Mb £ 95

32Mb £189 . I

White Knight Twfcnnkip

01920 822 321

9J0-5J0 Monday -Friday
P.O. BOX 38, WARE,
HERTS, SG11 1TX.UK

ShopperTkitorial

HTML

Ben Vost

HTM

utor

Welcome to the last of a two parter on HTML that goes a bit beyond the basics.

Welcome back to our
two- parter tables
tutorial for the web.
Only last month, I was
telling you about the
fact that IBrowse was the only Amiga
browser to support tables - lo and behold
two weeks later, a new demo version of
AWeb appears that can not only do tables,
but a whole host of other stuff it wasn't
very good at before.

You may remember that last month I
mentioned you can use nested tables to better
achieve the effect you are after with your HTML
This can be quite confusing but I'm sure you are
all highly intelligent people, so we'll give it a go
anyway. There are two cardinal rules that should
be followed when you are nesting tables. The
first is to turn the borders on your tables so you
can see what's going wrong and the second is
to indent each successive level of nesting {this
is made easier if you are running on a graphics
card-type resolution, but since we turned off
word wrapping it won't make any difference on
a lower resolution screen, it just means that
you'll have to scroll sideways). Turbotext, indeed
any text editor worth its salt, can help you here
with its auto-indent mode (which can be turned
on by hitting CTRL-i}.

Let's create an example page to show why
nested tables come in handy. The graphic
shown gives you a very confused idea of
nesting which should become more obvious as
you look at the code that makes it works:

I know it isn't easy. One of the choice tags
that comes in handy when using nested tables,
is the COLSPAN tag, and its sibling the
ROWS PAN tag. These two tags allow you to
create tables that extend all the way across
several cells or rows, usually for stylistic
purposes. If you want to include a picture in a
table you can come up against problems that
can be resolved by using nested tables or the
"SPAN tags. Have a look at the "I want nice
pictures in my tables" boxout.

Right, back again? OK. We've looked at
nested tables, 'SPAN and VALIGN tags and
now we'll add other tags to your table. Most of
the normal text style tags can be used in tables,
but not all Amiga browsers support them all.
You can use align tags inside table cells, but it's
better to use an ALIGN tag inside the <TD>
element (<TD ALIGN=RIGHT>, for example).

One tag that is crucial to maintaining the
way your page looks on any size screen, or in
any browser that supports tables is the WIDTH
tag. This can be used for <TD> tags and also
for the table itself and my preferred method for

using it is to put a <CENTER> tag at the start
of my html and just put everything inside tables
with a defined width. As long as you don't make
your tables too wide, everyone will be able to
see your page roughly as intended, with varying
amounts of white space on either side of table
depending on how wide the browser window is.
A good medium for your tables for this would be
about 500 pixels, as used in the tables in the
examples. This is narrow enough to ensure that
no-one should have to scroll from side to side to
see the entire width of the table, and not so
narrow that it can't be used creatively.

Finally, some words on image maps. Image
maps are something of a bug bear for
newcomers to html on the Amiga. The utilities to
create them tend to be hidden somewhere on
Aminet and then there are the different types:
NCSA httpd and server-side or client-side. If
you own a copy of ImageF/X. you can go for
Sigbjarn Skjaeret's MakelmageMap which can
create both server- and client-side image maps
relatively painlessly although it doesn't yet
support ellipses.

Alternatively, the new version of Personal
Paint, due out soon, also includes an image map
processor that uses the program's normal
drawing tools to create the map areas in a very
user-friendly fashion.

Nested tables - the source code
i

<html>

align-center>T3:R1:C2

<tr>

<headXtitle>Tableicious!</titleX/head>

<tr>

<td colspan=2>T2:R2:C1 (Note that this cell is using the

<td align=canter>T3:R2:C1<td

Colspan attribute to extend across the table)

Hi there: This here is a test of table power!<P>

a I i g n =ce n ter>T 3 ; R 2 ; C2

First we have a simple table. T stands for Table, R for

</table>

Row and C tor Cell;<P>

</t»ble>

<td a I ig n=ce r> I er>T4 :R 1 :C Ktd

<P>

align=center>T4:R1 :C2<ld align=center>T4:R1:C3

Now we'll add a fourth table, still with one level of

</Iable>

<td align=centre>Tt;R1:C1<ld align=centre>T1 :R1 ;C2<ld

nesting.

</table>

at ig n=centre>T t : R 1 :C3

<P>

<p>

</table>

Now we'll add a second level of nesting to make things

<P>

<trXtd>T2:R1:C1

even more complex...

Now we'll nest that first table inside another with a third

<P>

table (if you see what 1 mean)...

<tr>

<P>

<td align=center>T1:R1:CKtd

<trXtd>T5:R1 :C1

a!ign=center>T1:Rt:C2<td align=center>Tt:Rl:C3

<trXtd>T2:Bt :Cf

</tible>

<trXtd>T2:R1 iCt

ctable border=1 widlh=300>

<td>T2:R! :C2

ctable border=l width=280>

<tr>

<tr>

<td align=center>T1:R1:C!<td

<tr>

<td align=center>Tt:R1:CKtd

align=center>T1;R1;C2<td align=centet>T1 ;Rt ;C3

<td align=ceiiter>T3:R1 :C1<»d

align=center>Tt:R1X2<td ahgn=center>T1 ;Rt :C3

</table>

align=eentet>T3:R1:C2

</Uble>

<td>T2:R1:C2

<tr>

<td>TI:H1:C2

<td align=canter>T3:R2:C1<td

<tr>

atign=center>T3:R2:C2

<tr>

<td align=centcr>T3:R1 :CKtd

</table>

<td aiign=center>T3:R1 CKtd

January 1997

Issue 71

Ben Vost

HTML

ShopperTUtorial

want nice pictures in my tables

<html>

<head>

<t i 1 1 e>P>ct u reta b I e iciou s '.</ t i 1 1 e>

</head>

<TR>

<td width=320XIMG SRC="../bitmaps/group sml.jpg"

WIDTH=320 HE1GHT=250>

<td> I want several rows of text here.

<tr>

<ld>

<td>Here is the first.

<tr>

<td>

<td>Here is the second.

<tr>

<td>

<ld>Here is the third.

<tr>

<td>

<td>Hey[ This isn't working!

</table>

«CP>

Hera's one solution:

<P>

<TR>

<td width=320 rowspan=SXIMG

SRC=". /bitmaps/group sml.jpg" WIDTH=32D

HEIGHT=250>

<td> I want several rows of text here.

<tr>

<td>Here is the first.

<lr>

<td>Here is the second.

<tr>

<td>Here is the third.
<tr>

<td>This one uses the ROWS PAN attribute to force the

picture to have a rowspan of five cells.

</table>

<P>Here's another solution;<P>

■CTR>

<td width=320XIMG SRC=".. /bitmaps/group sml.ipg"

WIOTH=320 HEIGHT=250>

<tr>

<ld> I want several rows of text here.

<tr>

<ld>Here is the first.

<tr>

<td>Here is the second.

<tr>

<ld>Here is the third.

■ctr>

<td>This is a nested table with the picture
in the main table. The VALIGN tag has been used to
force the "words" table to sit at the top of the main
table.

</tabte>
</table>

</body>
</html>

As you can see from the source, getting picture
placement correct is made easier using a variety of tags.
The VALIGN tag can be used in the <TR> or <TD>
elements and takes the arguments TOP, CENTER and
BOTTOM.

Although the past year has seen a
tremendous increase in the hype over the web
and "web designers" are being offered pots of
cash, HTML isn't a difficult thing to get to grips
with, certainly no more difficult than
AmigaGuide,

Play around with ideas offline and when
you're happy, bung them up on your website.
Keep practising and you'll find that although
HTML isn't particularly nice for page layout,
you'll be able to force your idea of how your
page should look onto it, ■

a I ig n=cente r>T3 ;R 1 X2

<tr>

<td align=center>T3:R2:GKtd
al ig n=center>T 3 Ml ; C 2

</tabte>
<tr>

<td colspan=2>T2;R2;C1 (Note that this cell
is using the Colspan attribute to extend across the table)
<table border-1 width-4B0>
<tr align=center>
<tdalign=center>T3:Rl:Clctd
al ig rwenter>T3 :RT:C2<tdalig n=center>T3 ; R 1 :C3
</table>
</table>
<tr>
<td>T5:R2:C1

<td align=center>T&:R1:Cl<BR>Here's a
line of text (in a table) to go under the other tables
inside this table...

</table>
</table>
</body>
</html>

| WriO^ccUry |

First we have a simple table T stands for Table, R for Row and C for Cell

Now well nest that first table inside another with a thud table (if you see what I mean)

| Ruinjl Comtp'J-t.riq |

Now well add a fourth table, still with one level of nesting

M.: ','i ; L'**iE'*;

;:>,>..-"

T2;Rl:C1

TlrRl CI

t: r i .. :

T3R1:CI

T*fil:C2

T3R2CI

T3R2C2

T2R1 CZ

T3RI Ct

T3Rl C2

T3R2C1

T3 R2:C2

T2R2 C l (Note that this cell is usina the Colsnan attribute to extend acmss the table)

T4:RI.C1 T4R1C2 T4R1C3

Now well add a second level of nesting to make things even more complex .

T2 R2.L I (Note that this cell Is usina the Coisoan attribute to ex1end across the table!

T3RICI T3RIC2 T3RIC3

TSR2.C1

TbRiC)
Here's a line of text (in a table) to go under the other tables inside this table

T2R1 C2

T3:R1C1

T3 R 1 i. 2

T3R2CI

T3R2.C2

t'l-j* ij%j---j

Issue 71

January 1997

Amiga:

ShopperTkitorial

CanDo

John Kennedy

It may be the last in the series, but John Kennedy has a lot to get

through in this last CanDo tutorial. Take your seats, please.

I've two goals for this final instalment
of the CanDo tutorial. First of all, I'd
like to demonstrate how CanDo can
integrate with the rest of the Amiga
system. This will let you use CanDo
with your existing software, and also
expand on their features. Secondly, I want
to prove that CanDo is a worthwhile
programming environment in its own right
in fact, a unique system which can not only
perform the usual programming language
string, file and number processing things,
but also make it easy to control graphics
and sound. So, enough chat and let's get
down to it.

ARexx

The key to letting CanDo control your existing
applications is, of course, ARexx. No other
computing platform allows this degree of
integration and CanDo is ideally placed to make
the most of it. CanDo can both react to and
issue ARexx commands. In this example, I'm
going to assume you have the excellent
Directory Opus file management system running
in the background. If you don't, well shame on
you: you should.

1 Let's create a small window which will sit
on the Workbench display. Starting from a
clean deck, use the Window/Editor
display to define a small window.

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/ Iwrui Kimjh
fciiivlf Mn.,.

•m tk* Mate m(»
«r an friwt* term,

• tkt MritMCh KM*.
h*lu farm

■itatfttfitir/IMtu

MtrtMn

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toUrs

/(In. Ml-
/ tnlk Mtv
ttnttr

kr.H* ■

»».*■*«

tin MlH
/tuiUi far*.!

1 • 1 (m# ! |

2 Now create a simple text button. This is
the button which will execute an ARexx
script. When you have created it. go to
the Click script.

MWMttn

*» fc-i.i.

fcrwti...

tint

MttClulj

Itftt twd.r MiflH
Iru OWIItl I.IkIM

T«t / litMuM til* 1(4

j*w (■nuuti i«hi.

■

(Mill

3 Here we enter the magic ARexx code. Of
course, CanDo will help as much as it
can. Click on the ARexx button at the top
of the list of icons on the right of the screen,
and you'll see this requester. From here you can
do three things: set the ARexx name of port you
want to listen to, set the name you want to talk
to, and enter an ARexx command to send.

4 Choose the second option (Select a
message port to speak to...) and you'll
see a new requester. CanDo has kindly

created a list of ali programs running with ARexx
ports. If Directory Opus' port isn't there
(DOPUS.1) then make sure the program is

actually loaded and running.

RHexx/SfMJtfo

AREXX

ced port

ConUip.rtndMvous

C vb(?ri3r apti tc S . 1 1 br a

-O-

port -mrr

Cane* I

5 CanDo will insert some scripting
commands into the script. Now we can
add some of our own commands. You can
either type them in or use the ARexx menu
option "Send an ARexx message". How do we
know which commands to enter? The DOpus
manual has a long list of commands included at
the back. Similarly other ARexx compatible
programs will list their ARexx commands.

■m: ■fcnVf.Hri; '{Kit 1

«Hi'-|Mt.r

SSW >l«l IVifl-

itiw "fcmMKk'

All there is to it When you browse the deck, the
new window will appear on the Workbench.
Click on the single button, and the ARexx script
will be executed. The script causes DOpus to
list the contents of the RAM: drive, select any
files ending in .IFF and then display them. Finally
the screen is pushed to the background again.

Select a Message port to listen to...

Select a Message port to speak to...

Send an ARexx nessage...

Cancel

January 1996

Issue 71

John Kennedy

CanDo

ShopperTkitorial

Lottery

Perhaps if you win the lottery you could buy the
Amiga and re-launch it. Well, you can't say that I
didn't help you if you use this program to help
pick the winning numbers. It's a perfect example
of using standard programming techniques and
Amiga graphics together. No other programming
system makes this as simple.

• ^1 First of all, load up your
I favourite paint program and
I draw some balls. I mean it:
load up Deluxe Paint, set the
number of colours to 32, create a
range from black to white and use the shaded fill
to create a sphere. Make it about 32 pixels
square, cut it out as a brush and save it.

2 Now using the same screen mode and
palette, create a nice display for your
lottery number program - like the one
below. This ensures the brush and the screen
mode are set up to use the same colours. Save
it as a plain IFF screen.

3 Now load CanDo. Use the Window/ Editor
to create a default screen which uses the
image you designed as a backdrop. I also
switched off the screen borders and title to
improve the appearance of the display,

4 Create a button as before, and attach this
script to the Click action. This is the heart
of the program. First it defines a font to
use. Then it starts a loop from 1 to 49, and
using an array called BallQ sets all the elements
to zero. Then it starts another loop from 1 to 6,
as there are six balls to be picked. The value of
each ball is picked at random, and a check is
performed to make sure that this ball hasn't
already been picked. Finally the ball brush is
loaded and displayed, as is the random number,
We use the count variable to position the balls
and numbers across the screen.

The finished program is shown below.
Remember, we agreed to go half and half if your
numbers came up! There is plenty of scope for
you to add to the program. For example, using

Amiga Shopper

Lottery

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httm'dulMi'Eml: VI W

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SctPnnttcnl 'tws'.H

lctPrmtit.lt [nisSsib ,»,!? Q

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ln*p

Id blllliuniil

Until itntMl

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let nmtrrr Mot d.lll

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PrictTnt >*IMr,!(l««lXI)<H,l«

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r oil

Deluxe Paint's ability to mess around with
brushes to make the ball brush spin and vanish
into the screen. Capture this as an AnimBrush
and save it. CanDo can then replay the
animation to make the balls spin onto the
screen.

That's all we have time for this month, and

sadly, that's it as far as the tutorial goes. I'll

try and put some CanDo information up on a

Web site, so if you are interested, please

send me an email to:

johnk@infosys2.thegap.com

putting "CanDo" in the subject listing. ■

Issue 71

January 1996

Amk^a shopper 45

ShopperTUtorial

Programming

Paul Overaa

Blitz^

More Blitz help this month as Paul Overaa shows just how easy
it is to add an ARexx interface to a Blitz Basic program...

art 3

One of the many areas where
Blitz excels is in having a set
of specialised functions that
allow ARexx communications
to be performed. In many
cases it's possible to take an existing
Intuition event program, and with only a
few lines of extra code, create a version
that can be controlled both by
conventional gadget/menu use - and by
commands sent from a script or other
program via ARexx,

The example I've written has (as always)
been kept small to make it as straightforward as
possible to understand; Using a custom screen
a window is opened containing four gadtool
button gadgets labelled Black, Green, Blue and
White. As you select these gadgets - boxes of
the appropriate colour get drawn! In this respect
the program, event-wise, is easier than that
offered last month but, in addition to these
gadget controls, I've also added an ARexx port
and a simple 'control only' ARexx interface that
looks for the commands BLACK, GREEN,
BLUE and WHITE. Needless to say it's these
facilities, which allow ARexx scripts and so on to
remotely change the box colour, that are the
main area of interest this month.

As far as the communications side of things
are concerned we need to start the discussions
with Exec since ARexx essentially just makes
use of the general messaging facilities that Exec
provides. ARexx's real job, as far as its
communications go then, is primarily to act as a
sort of control centre. Programs or scripts send
their messages to ARexx using Exec functions,
and ARexx then sends them on to the required
destination again using Exec functions. How
does ARexx know where the messages should

The example program In action!

be going? Well, as far as the scripts that you
write are concerned - you tell it by having your
script set the current host using the ADDRESS
command. ARexx checks for, and all being well
locates, these ports by looking at a 'public
ports' list which Exec maintains. Because of this
any port used for ARexx communications has to
be made visible to the system by having its
name added to this list.

Port Creation And
Event Handling

With Blitz, public port creation and removal is
achieved using the CreateMsgPort{) and
DeleteMsgPortO functions and, as with all
allocation/deallocation operations it's best to
check that the port actually gets created. The
approach I've adopted therefore sandwiches a
conventional event handling loop within an
'If/ End If framework that looks like this...

port . l=CreateMsgPort ( "blitzrexx" )

if (port)

; event handling loop
DeleteMsgPort t)
End If

In general, to transmit a message a program will
allocate a block of memory, fill it with data, and
then send it to the port belonging to the
destination program. These messages
incidentally are always defined as extensions to
the basic Exec message structure and any
amount of additional data can be tagged onto
them. In the case of Intuition events the
extended unit used is called an IntuiMessage
but ARexx, similarly, has it's own special
message format based on a RexxMsg structure.

The good news at this point, however, is
that Blitz's high-level event handling can deal
with both Intuition and ARexx messages without
you, the coder, needing to know anything about
the internal message arrangements. You do
however need to be able to collect, and
properly deal with, messages that turn up.
Programs are always signalled by Exec
whenever a message arrives at a port and so,
providing the program is bothering to look for
these signals, it's relatively easy for it to tell
when a new message has arrived. When
detecting conventional Intuition events Blitz
programs can use the WaitEvent command but

January 1996

B lack

Green

B lue

White

Incoming ARexx events are mapped to the
corresponding gadget identities and then
passed to the ProcessEventi) routine just as
though a gadget had been hit!

there is in fact a more general function available,
called Wait, that allows ANY incoming message
to be detected. In short - it's this latter function
that needs to be used when ARexx messages
are involved!

Once a message has been collected and
used it needs to be 'replied' to. This is a job
which involves the program which received the
message linking that same message into the
message port of the program that originally sent
the message. The only difference on this return
journey is that the message will be given a
'finished with" marker - this tells the sender that
the message has been dealt with (and therefore
that the block of memory being used for the
message is free for re-use). With Intuition events
Blitz handles everything transparently. With

Listing 1

#B1 ID=1
#61 W=120

#B1_H=1S
#B1_X=270
#B1_Y=70
B_TEXT$(1)=

#B2 ID=2
#B2 W=12Q
#B2 H=15
#B2 X=Z70

#B2 Y=90
B_TEXT$(2)=

"Black"

"Green"

• Listing 1: You'll find these and other
button gadget characteristics and identities
defined in the source code's initialisation
block.

Issue 71

Paul Overaa

Programming

ShopperTutorial

ARexx messages however the replying task is
left up to you - so it's necessary to make a
ReplyRexxMsgO call once all associated
message processing is complete.

The Example Itself

To appreciate the overall structure of the
example source it's best, initially, forget about
the ARexx side of things altogether and
concentrate solely on the Intuition -related
aspects. Listing 1 shows part of the program's
initialisation block that defines the positions, size
and identities of the four gadtool gadgets. The
identities have been defined using constants in
the form #BX_ID which represent the numerical
values 1 , 2, 3 and 4. This is convenient in two
respects: Firstly, by defining the gadget text
labels in an array called B_TEXT$() I'm able to
identify the text associated with a gadget n hit
using B_TEXT$(n). Secondly, since a three
bitplane (8 colour) display is being used I've
used RGB commands to set screen colours
4,5,6 and 7 as Black, Green, Blue and White
respectively. This enables a DrawBoxO routine
to identify the right box colour to be used by
adding 3 to the gadget identity that Blitz's
GadgetHit function returns.

Because any single gadget identity enables
both the required text and the box colour to be
determined the event processing routine has
very little to do. As you'll see from listing 2 it
simply uses an event_id number (a #BX_ID
gadget identity returned by GadgetHit) and calls
a couple of routines, namely DisplayTextO and
DisplayBoxfJ, to modify the display. You'll notice
that this arrangement actually means that the
case selection statements shown are not
needed - I've left them in however to illustrate
the general framework needed in those cases
where additional processing is required.

The main event handling code is based on a
While/Wend loop with events being collected
until a #IDCMP_CLOSEWINDOW event
arrives. During this time, checks are made on
every message received to see whether it is an
Intuition event (when the Event function returns
a non-zero value) or an ARexx event (in which
case RexxEventO will be non-zero). In the case

Listing 2

Statement ProcessEvent(event_id}
SHARED B_TEXT$()
Select event id

DispIayTextfB TEXTSlevent id)}

Df a wBoxfevent _ i d }

; no gadget specific processing needed

; BUT you could add It here if it was...

Case #B1 ID -Black

Case #B2 ID ;Green

Case #B3_ID ;Blue

Case#B4 ID ;White

End Select

• Listing 2: A careful choice of gadget
identities has meant that very little work
needs to be done during event processing.

>rx test
UNRECOGNIZED COhHRND WAS SENT
Comanrj returned IS
1:>

If you modify the script to include
unrecognisable commands this is the sort of
error message that will appear.

of Intuition events a case/select statement is
then used to isolate #IDCMPJ3ADGETUP
messages, extract the gadget identity (via
GadgetHit), and pass this id value to the
Process Eve nt{) routine.

And Now That ARexx
Connection-.

Structure-wise, ARexx event handling follows
much the same pathway with minor differences
including the fact that Blitz's
GetRexxCommandO function needs to be used
to extract the command string contained in the
message and that the ReplyRexxMsg routine
needs to be used to tell ARexx that the message
has been dealt with. The most important thing to
remember about the ARexx event handling
however is that the program containing the
interface has absolutely no control over the type
of commands that an external program can
send.

In our case then we need to not only be
able to detect what we deem are valid
commands (BLACK, GREEN, BLUE and
WHITE) but must safely ignore any other text
strings that might be sent. The easiest way to
do this is to set up a case/select statement that
contains a default entry for any unrecognised
command and what I've chosen to do is display
a ????? message whilst re-drawing the box
using its original display colour. Since the Blitz
RepyRexxMlsg routine allows error codes to be
sent back to the process that originated the

Issue 71

fie tMt.i

*^w «*> to go*; » pro». __

Mr. « it unni *OtJ * ' "*"! ""*!

i Nm r .f ralui *S rtn- '■* a T» ' "flop :&t to Grprto- ft
DovdbindUwiiwNbtOTttglrtdpYifoim nwTtaopr rc t spfcm

J*m\m.at» ftnt»ssn
"■* '"*' au ••« —

You might also like to try controlling the
example program from other applications that
have ARexx interfaces!

Listing 3

Event messages

Something You Might Like To Know...
Everyone talks about Intuition and ARexx
messages as being sent and received
because that, in a logical sense, is what's
happening. In actual fact however nothing
really gets 'sent', copied, or moved at all -
the data that forms the message stays
exactly where it is in memory. What
happens is that the block of memory
representing the 'message' has various
address fields present which get adjusted
so that the message gets logically attached'
to the message port it is destined for. The
good thing about this arrangement is that
there is therefore never any need to actually
copy the message information. Programs
that receive a message read the contents of
the very same block of memory that the
program sending the message allocated
and this is what makes the Amiga message
arrangements extremely fast!

external command I've also made use of this
facility. You'll see from the code fragment in
listing 3 that I've used an error_flag variable
which becomes set when unrecognised ARexx
commands pass through the ARexx event
handler. The #RC_OK and #RC_WARN
constants, incidentally, are two of several
general codes that are defined in the Amiga
system headers {and are made available to the
Blitz code by including the Blitz amigalib.res
module).

The Coverdisk Code...

Unfortunately the source code (blitzrexx.txt) and
a runable version (blitzrexx) was not available in
time to go on the Coverdisk. Instead you can
find it all on Amiga Format's CD. Run the
program by double clicking the blitzrexx icon and
choose various gadgets to see what the
program does. Having done that (with the
program still up and running) pull down the
custom screen to expose the Workbench, open
a Shell window, and adjust the window and
screen positions so that you can see both the
Shell and the example program. Then use rx to
execute the test.rexx script. You'll see the box
colour changing as the script issues the various
colour commands!

The script incidentally includes an error trap
that will catch the #RC_WARN indicators that
get passed back when unrecognised commands
are used. Once you have experimented, and
appreciate what's going on, you might like to
add some rogue commands to see what
happens. Another easy modification would be to
add a QUIT command by extending the ARexx
event case/select structure and forcibly setting
idcmp_event to #IDCMP_CLOSEWINDOW
when such a message is received! 1 ■

If error flag=False

ReplyRexxMsg

arexx^event,#RC_OK,0,""

Else ReplyRexxMsgarexx event,#RC WARN.O,""
End If

• Listing 3: Blitz's ReplyRexxMsg statement allows error codes to be sent back to inform scripts
that a command has not been understood.

January 1996

Shop per Views

Letters

David Taylor

i*fi**iSi£

With a lump in his throat,
David Taylor delves into the
AS posthag and dabs
away a tear as he
reads your farewells.

The very last Talking
Shop and as you'd
expect a few of you
get the chance to
say goodbye.
Despite all the negative letters
we've had, we haven't had a
single "Told you so" or "Glad
to see you go" letters (yet) and
you all seem genuinely sad
that we are being pulled.
Thank you all for your support
over the years and thanks for
your letters of gratitude which
have made it all worthwhile.

Fond Farewells

I have just received the latest issue
and It's with dismay I discover that
the next issue is to be the last -
that's got to be the worst
Christmas present ever. To the
Shopper teams of past and
present thank you for the past five
years. You will be missed, I
wouldn't know my Amiga half as I
do well without you. In the
Captain's immortal words: "It
Was Fun"

Well its with a heavy heart that
I say goodbye. If Viscorp do
manage to bring the Amiga back
again lets hope that there's a
chance of resurrection for Amiga
Shopper. As long as one Amiga
owner remains, the fire still burns.
Be seeing you

Dave
E-Mail
As a subscriber to AS from issue
number one, I today (1 1.1 1.96)
received issue 70 and there on
page 50 was a large red logo with
the words "Stop Press" last issue
to be number 71. Is this really so?
If it is the case, then AS71 will
truly be a sad Christmas present,
I do however understand that the
market forces closure when
revenue does not cover
expenditure.

Please let me convey my
thanks, to you, all the past and

present staff and contributors who
have helped to make what I
consider to have been the very
best Amiga magazine to grace the
shelves of newsagents. Our
magazine will be sadly missed.
I wish you all well for the future.
Once an Amiga user always an
Amiga user.

Paul Law
E-Mail

Broken Hearted

Just got the latest issue of AS
today, and it was with a broken
heart I read about the last issue.
Never mind all the issues I've paid
for (I have more than half a year's
subscription left!), but AS is really
the only serious option for Amiga
owners. It seems like one of the
main reasons AS has stopped is
that no-one believes in the future
of the Amiga. Sad - especially as
this clearly shows that you haven't
been watching the Amiga market
recently.

Try to look up phase 5's
homepage (http://www.phase5.de)
and take a look at the pages
concerning the PowerUp project
and the A\Box. Then tell your
readers once more that it is
doubtful that the Amiga will ever
re-emerge from the dead!

Of course, the A\Box is not
called Amiga, and there are
reasons why. Therefore, you may
say that the A\Box cannot be
regarded as the new Amiga, but
with all the major Amiga

Phase 5 and their A/box could well hold the future for the Amiga,

DIGITAL PRODUCTS

developers showing support for
the A\Box, I regard the AVBox as
the new Amiga. Wordworth. Final
Writer, Personal Paint, StormC, the
list goes on (have a look at the list
yourself at phase 5's PowerUp
page) plus probably most of the
current PD and shareware on the
Amiga will all get converted to the
new p-OS with Amiga look'n'feel.
Add to this the extensive use of

How to contact us

Write In to Talking
Shop, Amiga
Shopper's letters
pages, and you
could win yourself
some cash. The Star
letter published every month
receives £25.

So, put pen to paper and
send your letters in to:
Talking Shop,
Amiga Shopper,

custom chips - that are NOT
underpowered by today's standard
- and you probably cannot even
dream of more.

If magazines like AS stop the
nonsense about replacing the
trusty Amigas with crappy PC's
and instead sound a bit optimistic
about things like the A\Box
project, I for one would enjoy
reading AS much more.

Future Publishing,
30 Monmouth St,
Bath, Avon BA1 2BW,

Alternatively, you can E-mail your

letters to:

amshopper@cix.compulink.co.uk

d a vetayl or@f utu re net. co.uk

Atl the letters received at these
addresses will be considered
for publication, unless you
specifically advise us otherwise.

48 Amiga:

January 1996

I Issue 71

David Taylor

Letters

jgghopperViews

The feature on UAE in AS 70 is
interesting, but as you know just
as well as the rest of the Amiga
community, the emulator way is
not the way to go. Buying a
Pentium just to go back to the old
A500 days is not an option.
Period.

Therefore, I do hope that AS
will one day come again with a
new name: "A/Box Shopper"! 1
PS.: Interesting reader's mail you
have on page 49, "Sayonara".
Glad to hear that people are
interested in making the future
Amiga multi-lingual. Though, it still
puzzles me that AS hasn't
mentioned Amiga Translators'
Organisation with a single word,..
Kind regards,

Ole Friis

Main Administrator & Danish

Language Administrator of

Amiga Translators' Organisation:

http://www2.dk-

online.dk/users/

Ole_Friis/Trans/

Years to Come

t am sorry to see that issue 71 will
be the last. I have enjoyed reading
the magazine for just over four
years. In fact since I changed from
the Sinclair QL (which I had been
using since 1 986) to an A600. I
would say to your readers that
they should not be despondent
about the Amiga. The fact that it is
no longer in production will not
make the slightest bit of difference
to their enjoyment of a magnificent
machine.

It will go on for years yet with
small firms making accelerators
and RAM cards; replacement parts
should not be a problem for many
years. I would suggest that they
get together to form an
international user group as did the
users of the Sinclair QL I still run
a local branch of the QL user
group "Quanta" (QL Users And
Tinkerers Association). Spares are
still available for the QL even 1 2
years after it ceased production. I
see no reason why the Amiga
should not continue along the
same lines. As we now have an
emulator to kick some sense into
the PC, we are in a similar position
to the QL which has emulators on
the Amiga, Atari and PC.

I suggest that users of the
Amiga now buy as much software
as they can afford; things like the
better quality software (Word worth
and similar for DTP. image
processors, file handlers, word
processors, spreadsheets,
account packages, etc). Get
yourself set up for some years. The
Amiga is still a good machine, so

stick with it.

Peter Rowell
Cambridge

Well, thanks tor your kind words.
It is indeed sad to say goodbye,
but the decision to close Amiga
Shopper was, in a way, not made
by ourselves (or even the faceless
Future Publishing). There is a
democracy of sorts within
publishing. Magazines that sell
well thrive and those that are left
on the shelves don't. As the
Amiga's fortunes have hit the
rocks, the readers of Amiga mags
have dwindled and AS has
passed from the former category
to the latter.

It's not anyone's fault. Not
ours, not Future's (in fact they
have kept publishing it for far
longer than competitors would
have believed) and not the
readers. If anyone is to blame, it is
the people who mismanaged the
Amiga and hopefully Viscorp can
change that, but they'll have one
hell of a job.

As Mr Rowetl says, none of
that should deter users. If the
machine does what you need it to,
then don't throw money away on
a new one. The Amiga will be
supported by small businesses for
years and there is still faithful old
Amiga Format to supply you with
the very best Amiga coverage.
You'll certainty see me popping
up there lor as long as they'll
have me, so I expect I'll see you
there too.

As to the negative attitude of
the magazine, t don't believe it
has been. We have been straight
all the way. When times were
good, we said so and when they
weren't we said so too. The piece
on the Amiga emulator wasn't
meant to say pack your bags to
PC land. It was there to show
what has happened (it is an
incredible achievement) and to
say to those of you with both
systems (of which there are quite
a few) or even those who have
sold their Amiga that you don't
have to leave the machine behind.

As I've said all over, the
problem isn't finding things to
write about in AS. We coutd
continue to fill as many pages as
Amiga Format, but without the
readership we couldn't afford the
space. Yes, there are still many
exciting projects and packages
coming out for Amiga owners and
Future have not stopped AS
because they don't believe there
is a future for the Amiga. They
would have kept printing it for as
long as people bought it - they

are a business after all. But our
numbers have dwindled - quite
probably because of the
enormous success of the Amiga
Format Cover CD which makes
the magazine so attractive that
few can resist. How could we
with a single floppy and less
pages compete with our own
sister mag? (And no there wasn't
a chance of producing an AS CD
version because there wouldn't be
the software for it.) It therefore
added to our troubles until we
had no future (excuse the pun).
Still, it has been fun and I think
we've alt enjoyed it. At! that
remains is to thank yourselves for
your loyalty and to quickly
mention a few names. Sue Grant
deserves a pat on the back for
managing to successfully relaunch
AS when it was threatened with
closure 1 8 months ago. Without
her, I wouldn't be here and
neither would the mag. She did a
wonderful job in pulling a
magazine together and making it
much more attractive to readers.
Thanks must also go to Nick
Aspell lor doing an incredible job
in putting together pages quickly
whenever we asked him, even
when he was heading out to the
pub. Without his help your disks
would never have had any labels
and AS would be missing even
more pages. Steve Dent has been
working hard to get the majority of
the last few issues of AS put
together so hats off to him, Nick
Veitch has always been a great
help for advice and insight,
knowing what exactly we would
be able to cover from issue to
issue and resolving any technical
queries we ever had. Lastly a big
thanks to Andrea Ball who has
sacrificed a social life to spend
her spare time getting all the parts
of AS together and subbed. She
might have grumbled about our
late copy, but she always
managed to turn around pages in
record time.

We also have to thank our
dedicated team of freelancers who
have continued to make sure you
have always had expert advice
and reviews: John Kennedy, Paul
Overaa, Steve Liddle, Ben Vost,
Graeme Sandiford and Larry
Hickmott. There have been others
of course over the years and our
thanks to them too, but these
have been our recent backbone.

To those of you who have
written in, but for whom we didn't
have space: thank you for your
time and effort - we enjoyed each
and every one of your letters. Any
final words ? We did it our way. ■

* va

Larry

* «*

&-*\

Issue 71 I

January 1996

The non-existent magazine for Amiga enthusiasts

from the entire AS teem!

Reserve your
copy today!

Remember that the easiest way to
ensure that you get hold of the January
1997 issue of Amiga Format is to
reserve yourself a copy at your local
newsagent. Fill in and cut out this form,
or photocopy it, and give it to your
newsagent.

Dear Newsagent,

Please reserve/deliver a copy of Amiga

Format magazine each month.

Name.,

Ad d ress

Phone no.

To the newsagent: Amiga Format is
published by Future Publishing
TT 01225 442244.

This is where we'd normally tell you about
how packed the next issue of AS would be.
As there isn't one though, we can't. So
instead, we'd like to thank you all for your years
of loyalty. We've enjoyed writing the magazine as
much as you've enjoyed reading it. From all the
staff, past and present, we wish you well and
hope to hear from you in future issues of our
sister magazine, Amiga Format - the world's
biggest selling Amiga magazine. Don't forget it's
now available in both floppy disk and CD-ROM
editions. To make sure you get your copy, fill out
the form and specify the version you would like to
buy. Be seeing you...

Amiga Shopper - who did what

CUSTOMER SERVICES: v 01225 §22510

BACK ISSUES:

if you have a query, write to:

Future Publishing Ltd. FREEPOST (B54900), Somerion

TA11 6BR, ore 01225 822511

Your guarantee of value

This magazine comes from Future Publishing, a company
founded just 10 years ago, but now selling more computer
magazines than any other publisher in Britain.

We offer:

Better advice. Our titles are packed with tips, suggestions

ard exptenarory features, written by the best in the business.

Stronger review*. We have a cast-iron policy of editorial

independence, and our reviews give clear buying

recommendations.

Clearer design. You need solid n formation and you need it

fast So our designees highlight key elements in the articles by

using charts, diagrams, summary boxes, annotated photographs

and so on.

Greater relevance. AI Future, editors operate under two

golden rules

1. Understand your readers' needs, 2. Satisfy them.

More reader Interaction, We draw strongly on readers'

contributions, resulting in the liveliest letters pages and the best

reader tips.

Better value for money. More pages, better quality: mags

you can trust.

magazine may be reproduced without written permission. We

welcome contributions for publication but regret that we cannot

return any submissions. Contributions are accepted only on the

basis of full assignment of copyright to Future Publishing. Any

correspondence will be considered for publication unless you

specif'caHy state otherwise, and we reserve the right to edit

letters published,

Consultant Editor; Nick Veitch
Deputy Editor: David Taylor
Sub Editor: Andrea Ball
Art Editor: Steve Dent

Sue Grant Larry Hickmott, John Kennedy, Steve Liddte. Paul
Overaa, Ben Vost, Nick Aspell, Cathy McKmnon, Scott Purnell.
Paul Jarrold. La Tuck

Photography; Rob Scott

Sales Executive: Helen Wafldna

Production Manager; Richard Gingell

Production Co-ordlnator*: Zoe Rogers

Production Technicians:

Jon Moore. Mark Gover,

Simon Windsor, Chris Stacker, Brian Hook, Jason Trtley

and Olwer Gibbs

Group Production Manager: Judith Green

Print Services Manager; Matthew Parker

Print Services Co-ordinate*? Janet Anderson

Paper Controller; F o^a Dear.e

Production Administrator: Cathy Rowland

Circulation Manager? Jon B'Ckley

Distribution! Sue Hartley

Oversees Ueencw: Mark Williams n 0171 331 3920

Publisher; Alison Morton
Managing Director: Greg Ingham

Chairman: Nick Alexander

Southempnnt Ltd, Poole, Dorset
ISSN 0961-7302 Printed m the UK
News Trad* Distribution -UK*i
Future Publishing « 01225 442244

Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulation

Audited circulat on July to December 1995: 1u\.473

uiure

January 1997

Issue 71

^ 1

V S T E M S

UNTIL
WAS DEC 31

(Browse £29.95 £22.46

Net&Web £39.95 £29.96

Net&Web2 £69.95 £52.46

Termite £39.95 £29.96

TermiteTCP £39.95 £29.96

Twist 3 Database £99.95 £74.%

Cinema4D £199.95 £149.96

Studio II Professional £49.95 £37.46

Disk Magic 2 £39.95 £29.96

Maxon Magic £29.95 £22.46

Media Magic ....£49.95 £37.46

Upper Disk Tools £14.95 £2.50

HiSoft C+ + £169.95 £127.46

HiSoflC++ Lite £79.95 £59.96

Devpac 3 £79.95 £59.96

Highspeed Pascal £99.95 £74.96

HiSoft BASIC 2 £79.95 ....£59.96

Gamesmith £99.95 £74.96

ProFlight Simulator £19.95 £14.')(>

Aura 8 £34.95 £26.21

Aura 16 £99.95 £~4.'ll>

Clarity 16 £149.95 £112.46

ProMidi Interface £24.95 £18.71

Megalosound £34.95 £26.21

VideoMaster £69.95 £~>2.46

VideoMaster RGB £109.95 £H2.4h

VideoMaster AGA £79.95 £Vl.')6

VideoMaster AGA RGB .....£129.95 £97.46

ColourMaster £69.95 £">2.46

Zip Drive (inc extras) £1 59.00 £ 14 (. Ill

Ja/ Drive (external) £449.00 £404. 1 ll

SMD-1 00 MPEG decoder .. £1 99.95 £1 79.95

Classic Squirrel £69.95 £~>2.46

Surf Squirrel £99.95 £74.96

2x CD-ROM Drive £89.95 £00.95

4x CD-ROM Drive ....£139.95 £125.95

12x CD-ROM Drive £239.95 £2n.'r,

ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED

POSTAGE £4, NEXT DAY £6

HiSoft Systems
The 0/d School
Greenfield
Bedford MK45 5DE

01525 718181
01525 713716
sales@hisoft.co.uk

In this last ever
issue of Amiga /
Shopper, as a
special thank
you to its readers
we are offering
discounts of
up to 25% off all
HiSoft products*

But hurry! The
offer is open only
until 31 Dec 1996.

To order freecall:
0500 223 660
and quote:
SLATFATF

Or write to the address
opposite, quoting the
same reference.

Ami think fau. Amiga Shopper, lor sir great years'

"The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia sets

the standard for future multimedia

Amiga CD-ROM titles."

L Taylor, Amiga CD-NEWS

INTERACTIVE
ENCYCLOPEDIA

Epic's commitment to the Amiga

has always heen our top priority and

we are proud to release the result of over

a year's unrk b\ our dedicated team - The Hpic
Interactive Encyclopedia.

Designed for the Amiga and only for the

Amiga, the Epic Interactive Encyclopedia lias
all the advantages of the "big" multimedia ref-
erence titles available on other platforms hut it
has one significant advantage - it looks like an
Amiga title, feels like an Amiga title and uses
all the plus-points of the friendly Amiga OS.

As a ictcienee tool it's ideal for ail the family.
If you just want to sit back and watch or have
the younger members of the famil) entertained,
the Epic Interactive Encyclopedia features

man_\ varied multi media tours. Just click and
go!

System Requirements - 2mh rum. Workbench 2

or above, hard drive, CD-ROM drive.
Recommended - 4mb+ Workbench 3 or above,
hard drive. Quad Speed CD-ROM Drive.
Some features require Workbench .1 and 4mh.

Feature Packed!

'True Multi-media Interface
►Produced in the UK
256 coloui interface lAGAt

'Very Litest information
^Thousands of subjects

I Imhsl i-il tiir/eivalin
Hiintlreik of samples
Hundreds of pielures

♦Over 1(H) film-clips

"Import nev\ subjects
l-.xporl duui in printer or file

"Kids pictorial Explorapedia

•Subjeci creatoi

♦Network compatible

'Over I hour of sound

"■Media-shim
Speech fuel lily

■■Kids hotlist selector

•'Manufacturer's SRP £29.99

Create your own subjeci

data

Classic Amiga Software

0161 7231638

Megatronix

01384 771 72

Power Computing

01234 273 000

First Computer Centre

01132319 444

Epic Marketing

0500 131 486

Hisoft

0500 223 660

Capri CD Distribution

01628 891 022

Weird Science
0116 234 0682

DJ Software

0121 382 7227

Gasteiner
0181 345 6000

Sadeness Software

01263 722169

Siren Software

0500 340 548

17Bit Software

01924 366 982

Special Reserve

01279 600 204

Direct Software UK

01623 759 498

Available from these and all other good Amiga stockists.

Epic Marketing, 138-139 Victoria Fload, Swindon. Wiltshire, SNI 3BU, UK Telephone: 01793 490988. Fax: 01793 514167 Dealer enquiries: 0181 873 0310, Dealer Sales Fax 0181 873 0311

'Packaging may differ from triat shown E&OE

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